


Deja Vu

by Greenninjagal



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Attempted Murder, Attempted Suicide, Bad Parenting, Car Accidents, How to Become a Villain 101, M/M, Precognition, Remus sees everyone die, Robbery, Shapeshifter!Deceit, Suicidal Thoughts, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Sympathetic Dark Sides (Sanders Sides), The author thought way too long about this, Underage Drinking, and now everyone else gets to think about it too!, casino - Freeform, mentions of pills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:20:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22827067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenninjagal/pseuds/Greenninjagal
Summary: “I don’t need you!” Roman spits like hellfire is in his veins.“Yes you do!” Remus shouts back, because he can’t even count the number of times that Roman almost got hurt this week. There’s a terrible taste in the back of his throat, like fresh squeezed limes and hot sauce that makes his head pound. It makes him want to laugh, want to cry, want to pick something up and throw it, but his future visions are all messed up and nothing works--“You can’t see the future, Remus!” Roman says and it sounds like he’s wanted to say it for a long time.***aka Remus can see the future and it often involves Roman's death.
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Deceit Sanders, Eventual DLAMPR
Comments: 293
Kudos: 474
Collections: TSS Fanworks Collective





	1. Oh, Cassandra

Remus is eight and only eleven minutes younger than Roman the first time he sees his brother get run over by a car.

He’s eight and only eleven minutes younger than Roman and its the middle of the day in summer and Roman has on bright red sneakers that match his favorite jacket. They’re on their front lawn because Mom said they were being too loud and they can’t decide on a game to play because Roman wants to play Wizards and Knights and Remus wants to play Escape from Monkey Island. Roman calls him a name, a mean one, a childish, dumb, cruel one that would mean nothing in a year, a month, a week, a minute. Remus picks up the ball by his knees and throws it as far as he can, because he doesn’t want to be the wizard who fights the knights  _ again _ .

The ball hits the ground, bounces twice and drops off the curb right into the street.

And the teenager driving the silver sedan is going twenty over the speed limit because they still believe nothing bad can ever happen to them.

Remus is eight and only eleven minutes younger than Roman.

Roman is on the ground and not moving and not breathing. 

The silver sedan screeches to a stop ten feet past, ten feet too late, _ ten feet.  _ And everyone is screaming: The teenager who just ran over Roman, the neighbor who had been mowing their lawn, Mom who came sprinting from the house. 

And then Remus is eight and only ten minutes younger than Roman because Roman is dead in the middle of the road. 

That’s the first time.

When he blinks, the vision is gone and Roman is in front of him calling him a mean, childish name and Remus has the ball in his hand ready to throw and a grey sedan is turning down their street going far too fast--

And Remus stumbles back and falls off his feet. His butt hits the ground hard and before he even knows what he's doing he's sobbing.

Roman twiddles over him with a bunch dumb, stupid apologies because he thinks that Remus is crying over  _ name calling _ .

Not because he saw himself throw a ball towards the road and Roman died, or he threw it softer and Roman was quick enough that he survived to hear the ambulance arrive but not to make it to the hospital, or he threw it towards the house and it broke a window and Remus got grounded, or he threw it at Roman and it left a bright red mark that Remus got sent to his room for, or he dropped it and it fell in the gutter and Roman didn't talk to him for a week--

And Remus doesn't know how to explain it to anyone. He doesn't stop sobbing until Roman is grounded for making him cry and he's bundled under a mountain of blankets with Mom right next to him holding him tightly and whispering softly in his hair. When Dad comes home and joins the hug, he asks Mom what happened and she can’t answer any better than Remus can.

They talk about keeping an eye on him, about doctors, and therapy and the words quite literally go over his head. Every time that Remus closes his eyes sees the bumper of the grey sedan, and his head echoes with the sound of his brother’s body hitting the ground again and again and again.

He’s eight and only eleven minutes younger than Roman when he first sees his brother die. 

There’s no explanation for it. No reason why. But it happens again and again and again: Roman goes running around the pool and slips on the concrete turning the water red, Remus gives him a playful shove off the playset and he hits the ground just wrong enough that he never gets back up, they leave their shoes on the stairs one time too many and Remus finally knows why Mom is always so insistent that they not do that.

Mom and Dad take him to the nice doctor, who tells him these pills will help him get better.

They don’t.

Even though he wishes they would so badly. He clings to the hope that every time they change the number of pills or the amount of them or the type of them that he’ll stop seeing his brother die or get hurt or cry.

(Its not just his brother: Dad falls off the ladder while putting up Christmas lights, Mom gets scared by a spider and hits her head on the cabinets, the next door neighbor and his wife get into a fist fight, his teacher chokes on a sandwich,---)

By the time he’s ten he knows the truth: He isn’t going to get better. There are no magic pills that will save him, no amount screaming or crying or begging that will make the visions stop coming, nothing.

“Remus!” Mom cries frustrated, when he won’t let her leave for work on time because there’s ice on the deck and she’s going to fall. “You’re too old to be doing this!”

Too old to be crying about every time his family gets hurt, too old to be worried about things that can happen, might happen, won’t happen. He’s too old for anyone to believe him when he says he knows whats going to happen.

In the middle of the night, he wonders what will happen if he runs away.

And thats when it starts: the vision of Remus in the pajamas he’s currently wearing packing his dinosaur bag with t-shirts and pants and Roman’s jacket and sneaking down the stairs only to be caught by Dad who was up for a midnight snack; the vision of him in the pajamas he’s currently wearing packing his dinosaur bag with t-shirts and pants and Roman’s jacket and struggling to get his window open, which wakes up Roman who starts crying loudly and Dad comes running; the vision of Remus packing nothing and running down the stairs to hug Dad; the vision of Remus rolling over and going back to sleep--

Thats when it starts to make sense.

Remus is ten and eleven minutes younger than Roman when he realizes he can pick and choose what vision he wants to happen of the millions of ones he can see all in his head in that instant. 

When Remus pulls Roman back before he gets scratched by the neighborhood wild cat he smiles and tells Roman, “I’ve seen it before!”

“Oh! Like Dejavu,” Roman says and Remus doesn’t correct him.

He stays closer though, watching and wondering what happens if “x”, and preventing bad things from coming to them. When the seventh grade bullies coming looking for them, Remus convinces Roman to follow him to the theater room to hang out; when there’s the pop quiz that no one studied for he memorizes the answers from the version of reality where he steals steals the smartest kids paper; when it snows Remus doesn’t shove a snowball down Roman’s back because he knows that it will cause him to get sick.

“Hey Roman!” Some kid in eighth grade says during lunch, “Wanna hang out?”

And Roman who is fourteen and only eleven minutes older than Remus grins brightly, “We’d love to!”

And Remus sees every version of how the conversation goes: Every version where that nameless senseless kid shrinks back and awkwardly admits the invitation doesn’t extend to Roman’s crazy weird brother, where Roman gets angry and mad and destroys his own reputation, where Roman falls to peer pressure and admits Remus is pretty weird---

“Nah!” Remus says before anything can actually happen, “I don’t wanna hang out! Ro, you go ahead.” (Because he’s seen ahead and knows that Roman comes back bursting with excitement and happiness and really thats all Remus has ever wanted for him, isn’t it?)

Even if the whispers through the highschool begin because of it. Remus can take a few rumors, a few snide remarks, a few isolations, to make his brother happy.

“He’s on drugs you know,” One girl says once Roman is out of earshot. Always out of earshot. “Totally crazy.”

“The way he looks at everyone is creepy.”

“Sometimes he acts like he already knows what people are gonna say and its annoying.”

Remus never felt the need to experiment with his power that much. 

“Just leave me alone, Remus!” Roman yells when they are seventeen years old and only eleven minutes apart.

“I’m not gonna let you go to that party!” Remus yells back.

“You don’t control me!”

“You’re going to do something stupid!” Remus snaps back, “You’re going to get drunk, and then drugged and then--”

“I’m not gonna get drunk! I’m not even gonna drink!” Roman throws back.

“Yes you are!” Remus snarls because he’s seen it time and time again, the way that Roman loves attention the way that he becomes pliable the second an older boy looks at him and compliments his hair and the second he’s convinced to have  _ just one drink.  _ Remus has seen the way his own knuckles look bruised and broken against the skin of those college kids that had looked so cool, the way that metal handcuffs feel as he’s loaded into the back of a police car with the sounds of two ambulance sirens wailing over the music.

He’s seen this, seen the way it ends if Roman goes to the party with or without Remus.

He’s always been able to see the way it goes.

“Shut up!” Roman yells.

And that--- that is not what he’s supposed to say.

“Shut up, Remus!” Roman yells, again. “You’re just mad because I got invited and you didn’t! I’m sorry I have friends, Remus! I’m sorry they like me more than you! Maybe if you weren’t such a  _ freak  _ you would have been invited too!”

Remus doesn’t know what to say. It feels a lot like he was shoved on stage without being told what show they’re preforming.

Roman shoves by him, which is not something that Remus saw him do in any of the visions. Why hadn’t he seen this version of the future? Why wasn’t this going as expected?

“Roman--”

Roman whips around to face him, and his red in the face, bursting with angry and emotions and Remus feels himself get angry too. 

“I don’t need you!” Roman spits like hellfire is in his veins.

“Yes you do!” Remus shouts back, because he can’t even count the number of times that Roman almost got hurt this week. There’s a terrible taste in the back of his throat, like fresh squeezed limes and hot sauce that makes his head pound. It makes him want to laugh, want to cry, want to pick something up and throw it, but his future visions are all messed up and nothing works--

“You can’t see the future, Remus!” Roman says and it sounds like he’s wanted to say it for a long time.

Remus is seventeen years old and only eleven minutes younger than Roman, when  _ oh.  _

When he realizes that he’s far too old to cry over watching Roman die, far too weird to get any friends at school, far too much to keep having Roman believe him when he says anything.

It’s Deja Vu. Its Coincidence. Its a trick and a joke and nothing more than that.

_ Oh. _

Roman doesn’t know a single thing about him, doesn’t know how much time Remus put into making sure everything great happens for him, doesn’t know how much of himself Remus gave up for Roman to be happy. He doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know.

And Remus, with his blood boiling because Roman was his brother and  _ clearly  _ he didn’t feel as strongly about Remus as Remus felt about him, wonders what would happen if he punched Roman in the jaw--

_ They end up fighting on the floor in the hall between their rooms, Mom and Dad come running and Remus gets grounded while Roman gets to go out to the party with a black eye. _

\--if he shoved Roman down the stairs--

_ Roman screams as his arm breaks and he spends the night in the ER, Remus is grounded and Roman stops talking to him for a very long time. _

\--if he grabbed the snowglobe on Roman’s desk and slammed it into Roman’s head--

_ He topples to the ground, screaming glass and silver sparkles shatter all around them like pretty little snowflakes, Mom and Dad come running and the screaming doesn’t stop. _

\--if he fit his hands around Roman’s neck and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed--

_ Roman claws at Roman’s hands, but he’s too off balance, too surprised, too unprepared. He gasps for air and it takes longer in the real life than it does in the movies for Roman’s pretty brown eyes to roll back in his head and his pulse to flutter to a stop and Remus keeps hold him for three minutes more before he lets go and Roman is… Roman was… suddenly there’s only ten minutes between them, nine, eight. _

Remus digs his nails into the doorframe of Roman’s room. He laughs.

“Fine,” Remus chokes on his laughter, his mouth tasting like his own stomach acid. “Fine, go to the party, Ro. I’m done caring.”

“Good!” Roman yells.

The door slams in Remus’s face and he can’t stop laughing about it. He drags his fingers through his hair and laughs all the way to his room, gasping for breath as he empties his backpack of school work and notebooks and everything. 

Remus is seventeen. And he runs away from home.


	2. Would You Believe Me If...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ll tell you what,” Remus says as they join a table for poker that was just clearing up. “If you can figure out my trick, I’ll do one thing for you.”
> 
> “For me?” The man echoes, “Interesting. Anything I want?”
> 
> “I will fuck you on this table if you tell me to,” Remus says, making the woman next to them choke on her pina colada. 
> 
> “Charming,” The man hums, “But I believe I have a much better thought in mind.”   
> ***  
> aka four years after Remus runs away, he makes a friend and gets to see even more death!

Remus spends his twenty first birthday at his favorite location: The Basilisk Casino. Its a nice place, the type of place that drains life forces with people along with their wallets. The golden walls shimmer like scales if you look too long at them, which is all the more reason to focus back on the dice, the slots, the chips and coins and cards. The coins all have snarling snakes on them and Remus just loves rolling his thumb over the crevices of the design while he watches his opponents sweat. He can’t count the number of times he’s been cursed out at the table, the number of times he’s been checked for bugs by the debugging crew, the number of times that he’s had several dealers and security watch him as he played at the tables, the number of times where he cashed in his coins and called himself “Lucky”. 

Luck, of course, has nothing to do with it.

But he usually walks out of the casino several thousand dollars richer and it’s  _ nice.  _ To have money, to have a room in the upstairs hotel that he paid for himself, to have clothes that he picked out, to wave his excess cash in the faces of every person who’s tried to figure out how he’s cheating.

(Because they all know he’s cheating. One doesn’t go a full night at the tables without losing once. It's actually impossible.)

((Unless, of course, you can see the future.))

Remus is twenty one and he’s never lost a game of cards.

The staff has mixed feelings about him and Remus knows this, because they hate cheaters when it reflects badly back on them-- and boy did a lot of them get yelled at those first three weeks before Remus had asked his poor dealer to invite her boss to the table to play-- but the number of cheaters that Remus outed purely for the fun of seeing their eyes go wide has landed him in the good graces of a few.

Which is weird, being in the good graces of people. And so is knowing that if he finds that one cute dealer with the scar on his knuckles, they’d go up to Remus’s room and they’d spend the night with two bottles of Baileys and no clothes.

“Hit” Remus sings as he knocks on the table behind his cards. His dealer, a girl who’s been working for a while and knows his tendency to give her instructions before she’s finished dealing to everyone at the table, nods to show she’s seen him. The players to his left and his right both glare at him.

Remus smiles, because he already knows what cards they’ve got and what they were going to bet now that he’s announced himself: the old guy with the silver watch was going to stand, the loser with the mullet was going to hit as well, and the woman who’s tag was sticking out was going to hit then split. 

Only that old guy was going to walk away with any money earned, four rounds later, after the lady loses everything she made in a risky gamble and the slots catch Mullet head attention.

Remus stays because he likes Blackjack, likes the easy memorization, likes the repetition and the exchange of chips, and he flips one of his Barneys in the air as he waits for the table to refill. 

“That’s certainly impressive,” A voice says sounding like silk even over the chattering of the slot machines to their backs. 

“This? Its nothing!” Remus flips the coin again, letting the stranger catch it in the air. “I’m more impressive in the bedroom.”

The man hums, twisting his wrist to look at the coin he caught. “Do you often let people steal 500 American dollars from you?” The man asks so very teasingly as he rolls the coin between his own gloved hands. 

“You’re going to give it back,” Remus says with a grin, “One way or another!”

The man has a nice smile-- a smile far nicer than the one the dealer with the scar on his knuckles has-- and its prettier in the present time than looking at it in the future. His teeth are all aligned and straight and his molars grind together just enough to look like a threat. He was dressed better than most of the people out tonight: no fancy tourist with rented suits that barely fit, and he had an actual handkerchief. 

Remus wonders if he pulled it out would it be tied to another and another and another like every other clown he’s met? 

\-- _ No. The man just laughs at him and and twirls the Barney between his hands.He does not ask for it back.-- _

“You’re awfully confident about getting your money back when this is a game between the house and I,” the man says. He’s got green eyes, and black hair that’s gelled right back out of his face. The way he leans against the table makes him so easy to  _ push-- _

_ \--The man hits the ground spilling his rack of chips and the nearby tables pounce on them like panthers. Its honestly funny to watch and Remus laughs the entire time as the police are called.-- _

“I’m confident about a lot of things,” Remus wiggles an eyebrow at him. “How confident are you?”

Instead of answering the man places the purple coin in the betting square on the table. Remus tosses a pumpkin just to top him. 

“I heard a rumor that there’s a man here who’s never lost a game before,” The man with the green eyes says and even though there are four other people at the table (betting far lower than them of course; the table minimum is twenty five), Remus feels almost as if its just the two of them in the world. “Can I assume that man is you?”

“You know what they say about assuming,” Remus laughs as the dealer begins her deal, “It makes an ass out of me and you!” 

There’s a four of spades in front of him, and an ace of clubs in front of the stranger. The dealer has a five of diamonds. 

\-- _ He hits and receives a King of diamonds that puts him at fourteen. The stranger also hits, and receives a matching King of diamonds. He stands and the dealer reveals her second card: a jack of clubs. Fifteen to Fourteen to the house.-- _

_ \--He hits and receives a King of diamonds that puts him at fourteen. The stranger also hits, and receives a matching King of diamonds. He hits a second time and receives a three of clubs. The dealer reveals here second card: a jack of clubs. Seventeen to fourteen to Remus-- _

The stranger is watching him, Remus notes with a feral grin as he taps the table behind his cards for their lovely dealer. The stranger who was betting using Remus’s money, scans the table and then taps as well.

The dealer gives Remus and Dee their matching Kings of diamonds.

“What are the chances,” The stranger muses. “Perhaps I should bet with your money more often.”

Remus taps the edge of the table behind his cards again. 

“Don’t worry about that!” Remus waves him off, “You’re going to lose it in Poker in an hour.”

“Are you challenging me to a game?” the man says, half turning from the table to wave down a drink waitress. “Why would I ever want to play a game of cards with a man who doesn’t lose?”

“Beats me!” Remus admits, “but we end up over there anyway!”

The stranger laughs. It sounds like a melody to Remus’s ears, something soft and warm and Remus thinks he should hate it. Whats the point of soft and warm things when there are chips and cash and not-completely-terrible-whiskeys? Soft and warm things are illusions anyway: no mother’s love is unconditional, and no late night blanket forts in his brothers room last forever.

Isn’t it great? That whole “growing up” thing?

He’s thought about making a call with the payphone but Roman’s old number is someone else's now and Mom answers the landline with a different last name.

Remus is twenty one. Roman should be too. If he managed to stay alive this long without Remus being his godforsaken guardian angel. 

The waitress returns with the drink and its a screwdriver that smells like oranges even from where Remus is standing. The stranger gathers up his chips won in the game, and slots them back into his rack.

“Well?” He says, “I would like to see this cheating trick of yours.”

Remus laughs at him taking his own tray. “ _ No one _ knows my trick.” 

“Oh?” The man sips his drink, “No one knows? Do I get a prize if I figure it out?”

Remus’s shoulder brushes with the man as they walk towards the poker tables. Its quieter here, away from the slot machines, and the tables are thick with intense glares at cards. The craps tables are going strong and someone must have just won big because everyone is clapping and someone is screaming. The roulettes are hardly any better, although Remus nearly cleared out a whole dealer last week with his multitude of correct guesses that got him physically dragged from the table because  _ its literally a 1 in 36 chance every single game and theres no way anyone should be able to win three times in a row, much less fifteen.  _

“I’ll tell you what,” Remus says as they join a table for poker that was just clearing up. “If you can figure out my trick, I’ll do one thing for you.”

“For me?” The man echoes, “Interesting. Anything I want?”

“I will fuck you on this table if you tell me to,” Remus says, making the woman next to them choke on her pina colada. 

“Charming,” The man hums, “But I believe I have a much better thought in mind.” 

He’s taking it surprisingly seriously and Remus knows he should probably be concerned, but the truth of the matter was, he wasn’t. After all, he spent nine years physically telling the people closest to him that he could see the future, and they didn’t believe him. A strange man who was going to lose the first three hands is never going to believe in a magic like that.

The irony of it all. Remus wonders what he did that pissed off the big G up there so badly that they cursed Remus to never be believed. Maybe he should have just changed his name to Cassandra and started wearing tunics around the casino (because hell yeah those things would have been much more breathable than these slacks and button up he was currently wearing). Plus a tunic would totally show off his calf muscles. 

\-- _ He gets to play three more games of roulette before he’s forced out by security who ask him very nicely to put on pants before coming back and Remus just thinks its funny how he got in to play in the first place. Turning the poor door boy bright red and stammering-- _

There’s something fascinating about the way the strangers lips look around the straw, the way his eyes settle on the cards of the table the way his gloves fingers weave over his chips with the certainty of someone who knows what they are doing. Remus thinks that he might have played a game with this man before, once or twice, (because he comes here often enough, doesn’t he?) but his memory hasn’t been great since he was seventeen and thought about crushing his brother’s windpipe.

Remus is twenty one and this stranger looks like danger no matter which way Remus squints at him. But is that such a bad thing?

“Are you going to look at your cards?” The man asks without looking at him.

“No,” Remus says, because he already has in the future and he’s got a seven and an eight both of diamonds. (The strangers fingers hover over his own cards-- a five of clubs and a jack of spades-- and his green eyes darting to glance at Remus in suspicion.) The other players at the table shift nervously and Remus thinks that even the old lady at the end is going to pitch a fit about Poker etiquette but she holds her tongue. 

He sees ahead to the rest of the hand, something he glanced at earlier. By the time the dealer draws the turn card, Remus not looking at his cards makes the the business man to their left over confident about his chances about his straight. The couple on his right have both individually decided to back out, and the old lady is holding nothing but a two pair. She folds when she realizes that neither Remus nor the very attractive stranger to his left are going to fall for it. 

The stranger folds, the businessman checks, and Remus wins the round with a straight flush without having picked up his cards before revealing them.

“You’re cheating!” The business man yells and Remus grins at him as he takes the two blacks and the quarter that the man bet with.

“Not in any way that you can prove, big boy.”

He’s twenty one and he wins the next three hands before the table clears out of all but him and the stranger who followed him there. Security is called twice to deal with another debugging ritual at the old lady’s insistence and the the dealer is screeched at by several parties. Remus thinks the old guy handles it with grace and elegance: threatening to have security called over if the players don’t sit down right then and there.

“How much do you make in a night?” The stranger asks, as the dealer changes from the older gentleman to a young girl.

“Are you planning something?” Remus asks, inhaling the scent of oranges that waft off this stranger, “Gonna get me drunk and in bed and then steal my money? Slit my throat for good fun?”

“I don’t think I’d have to get you drunk for that,” His eyes slide past Remus for a moment to something across the room. 

“Oh, so true,” Remus agrees, “Everyone loves a good bit of knife play!” The dealer begins to shuffle the cards to nicely. 

“Besides,” Those green eyes come right back to Remus, startlingly close and perceptive in a way that makes shivers run down Remus’s back. “Shouldn’t you already know the answer to that?”

Remus is twenty one, spending his birthday in a Casino as far away from where he grew up as he can be. And despite not having talked to his family in four years, he can still hear Roman’s voice in his head, chanting a mantra of  _ “I don’t need you”, “I don’t need you”, “I don’t want you”.  _

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, pretty boy,” Remus says picking up his cards to look at them, to feel them, to remind himself he’s here in this casino and not back in the room with his hands on Roman’s fluttering little pulse.

The stranger rolls a Barney from his tray, Remus’s Barney, and places it on the betting pool. “Interesting.”

Remus wonders what that means, but there’s no answering vision. Any time he pushes the stranger laughs it off until the dealer motions for them to play or leave the game. 

Remus is twenty one and the way that this stranger said “interesting” is the way a scientist says it before they start dissecting a frog. Clinical, cold, like a knife straight to Remus’s throat. His green eyes are dangerous pins holding Remus in place at this table, but he can’t find it in him to wish he was anywhere else.

The stranger picks up his new cards and pretends to look at them. Remus isn’t sure what that means, isn’t sure why this stranger suddenly seems so much different, isn’t sure what could possibly be more interesting than the card game they're playing.

Until he is.

Of course because--

\-- _ He places another three blacks in the betting pool in front of him and he turns just in time to see the stranger lunging towards the crowd that was passing behind them; towards the armed security gaurd that was wheeling the  _ **_fucking cash box of the casino_ ** _ towards the elevator to the vault across the floor  _ **_fuck._ ** _ Several guns go off and and there’s a couple hundred screams that break Remus’s eardrums in the moment, but all he’s aware of is the body at his feet, the body of the stranger with pretty green eyes, with welts of red bursting out the back of that nice tailored suit that was suddenly shredded and that face smashed into the floor, but there’s no mistaking the way his skin on the left half of his face wasn’t-- _

There’s something in the back of his throat that tears him up inside, like he’s regurgitating a bunch of swords he forgot he had swallowed. Every hair on his body stands on end, curling with an electric current that didn’t actually exist but one that Remus couldn’t get out of his veins even is he started carving with a knife--

He forgot-- how did he forget? He hated the color red so damn much; how could he have forgotten that?

He grabs the stranger beside him with an iron grip and pressed him to the table as that cash box rolled by, as that future twists away, as that sight fades from his vision from something plausible to a nothingness in the back of his mind. 

“Sir?! Sir!” 

The stranger gasps for air, looking caught between surprised and not, with those fake green eyes and that stolen black hair, and that completely unmarred face and makes Remus’s skin crawl. Remus wonders if this stranger--this  _ stupid idiot  _ of a stranger-- knows his body reverts to normal once he’s dead and gone and passed.

The rest of the table is in chaos, and Remus isn’t sure if its because both his and this stranger’s chips just got tossed across the table with the viciousness of a life or death (or death or  _ death or  _ **_death_ ** ) situation, or because the Dealer dropped her deck, or because Remus just grabbed a man and that wasn’t poker etiquette or something else entirely.

He doesn’t care.

He lets go of the stranger (the living, breathing alive stranger), and he shoves through the buzzed, singing pair behind him, knocking them both to the ground. His hands-- oh fuck his hands sting and shake with some emotion that Remus can’t remember the name of.

“Sir! Your chips!”

Remus rips at the collar of his shirt, tearing off an entire button as he struggles to get enough oxygen in his lungs. The golden walls shimmer and shine and distract, but Remus throws himself through the crowd to the exit.

Remus is twenty one the first time he meets someone else like him.

Well not entirely like him, because this stranger who stumbled upon him by chance doesn’t see the blood, or the deaths, or the future. He doesn’t know all the consequences, doesn’t know the feeling of seeing living, breathing people just  _ stop _ , doesn’t know what it smells like to mix blood and a half finished screwdriver on the floor of a casino for a box of cash that he had no chance of leaving the building with in the first place.

The night air hits him like an eighteen wheeler (which Remus knows what that feels like, he does, because he thought about it once out of curiosity four years ago when he couldn’t quite believe that he had wasted seventeen years of his life on someone who would never been willing to do the same). Its bitter cold and harsh and it tears his skin almost right off his bones.

He stumbles and nearly falls, does fall, is caught.

Caught by the back of his shirt and hoisted back up, with a second hand stabilizing him by his chest. Remus starts to laugh because he didn’t see this coming.  _ Of course _ he didn’t see this coming.

Its almost like that day when he didn’t see that argument with Roman coming, except back then he was looking ahead and that wasn’t an option, and now he just hadn't been looking long enough, hard enough,  _ close _ enough.

Remus feels something against his back, solid, cold, oh its a wall. The stranger who followed him from Blackjack to poker, who bet with Remus's money, who just caused Remus to lose his first game of cards ever-- that stranger with green eyes that aren't real is right in front of him pressing him to the wall and holding him steady.

Remus laughs harder like he can dislodge the cancerous lump in his throat by the force of his will alone. 

"Did I die?" The stranger asks as Remus wheezes for air.

And isn't that just  _ hilarious _ ?

"Everyone...dies!" Remus convulses under the man's touch, "Everyone dies... someday, Scales!"

The stranger isn’t like him, because instead of seeing things and wondering if they’re all in his head, he fucking changes his appearance.

Remus hiccups painfully-- a gasping air that shreds his diaphragm as he laughs with tears on his face. He forgot again: how he hates the sight of red, how he needs to breath if he wants to keep living, how he's too old to be crying over every single, little, itty, bitty death he sees.

"You can see the future," the man says like a statement while Remus drags his nails over his own face and through his hair to get rid of his worthless tears.

"Its funny!" Remus grins with all his teeth. "It's always funny! Did you know you revert back to your natural half snake self when you die?"

The stranger flinches, just like everyone does when Remus opens his mouth and talks about death, just like someone who’s afraid of dying, just like  _ Roman _ .

“You,” Remus says gaining enough sense of his own to shove the stranger off of him and back, “You are…batshit fucking insane!” He laughs, because what else is there to do? Scream? Cry?

(He’s screamed and cried before. It doesn’t work, because they  _ never  _ believed him and then they go and get hurt and tell Remus to shut up, _ shut up, I don’t need you _ \--!)

“How far in the future can you see?” The stranger asks.

“Take me to dinner first,” Remus twists a hand through his hair, then drags it down his face, smushing his nose and flattening his mustache and then dropping it into the empty air.

The stranger catches his hand, and the silk touch of the gloves freezes Remus’s where he stands, against the wall of a casino in a dark alley where the shimmering light doesn’t touch and the sound is strangely diluted.

“Answer me,” the stranger demands.

Remus laughs, “Or what? You’ll turn your hands into claws and rip my throat out? Maybe roll your body into a giant python and choke the life out of me without leaving a fingerprint? Can you secrete poisons too? Spit them right into my eyes--”

His other gloved hand goes right over Remus’s mouth, squeezing the hallows of his cheeks until its just borderline painful. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Remus already knows the answer before this stranger asks, already knows that despite the burning closeness between them, despite the cool indifference he’s been portraying, despite the millions of ways that he  _ could  _ kill Remus, he’s not going to, not in any way that matters.

He’s a good guy like that.

Kinda.

“You must think I’m insane,” Remus gurgles, shoulders shaking from laughing, with the future in his eyes and no air in his lungs.

“Are you?”

“Not that insane. Not yet!” He pushes off the wall and leans forward into his companions personal space until their faces aren’t more than a few inches apart. “Can’t you tell? I’m the pinnacle of stability, Slitherous Snape!”

“Stability is a lie made up by society to sell more products.” The man waves him off, easily without putting so much as an inch between them. “You are a seer. And I’m in desperate want of someone who can see the future.”

“Because you want to rob the casino we just left,” Remus says.

It sounds different coming from his own lips rather than the man before him. It sounds different hanging in the space between them. It sounds different being a real thing.

“Because I want to screw over the owner of that casino for some unsavory acts he performed against someone who was dear to me,” The man corrects.

“An altruist!” Remus does a shimmy with his upper body. “All that money is just a bonus then, right?”

“Oh yes absolutely! And How…” The man hesitates and clears his throat innocently, “How much money…did you say?”

Remus laughs at him, again. The hysteria is fading leaving another pesky emotion that Remus doesn’t know if he likes or not. Its dangerous, he knows that. Dangerous because even while he stands here, talking to this shapeshifter who is every bit a lie as a person can be, he feels his heels beginning to dig into this idea.

This stupid awful terrible idea. This What if---

\--- _ oh…. Oh no. _ \---

“How many times do we die?” The man asks, breathlessly excited. “How many times do we get away?”

Remus is twenty one and he knows that stealing is morally wrong.

But.

But there’s a man in front of him who likes money far too much and a casino behind him that’s filled to the brim with cash waiting and six hundred fifty million futures where they both die painful, violent, expected deaths.

And for once Remus can’t even focus on that part of this frankly awful idea. He’s too busy focusing on the way that in every single future-- all of them-- there’s not even a little--

Remus watches them again and again, as many times as he can until he almost forgets that they haven’t even happened.

And  _ oh.  _

The stranger is looking at him and there’s something in those green eyes that he can’t hide even if he wanted to.

“There’s a dealer,” Remus says, because he  _ needs  _ to see it happen for real. “Two inches taller, blue eyes, scar on his knuckles. Turn into him.”

The stranger blinks and his eyes are blue, his skin ripples like a puddle when a child jumps in it, and suddenly Remus is staring at someone completely different and yet entirely the same. The man before him is the dealer from the casino, but when he smiles so softly all Remus can see is that stranger who didn’t hesitate at all.

And  _ oh.  _

Remus knows he’s in trouble, because he can feel electricity in his veins, that burns all of his nerves and hijacks his brain. Because this is what its like for someone to trust his power, for someone to have complete and utter faith in  _ him _ .

This is what someone believing him when he said he could see the future is like.

“You’re bleeding,” The man says tentatively.

“Happens,” Remus says cupping his hand under his nose to catch the red splatters before they hit the ground. In the shadows he can’t see just how scarlet they are and he thinks that’s a relief. “You really….you really didn’t hesitate.”

“Should I have?” The man cocks his head to the side, half a grin on his face, as if he doesn’t quite get the joke Remus is telling. (There’s no joke, and that fact alone makes Remus’s stomach flip.)

The question is a loaded gun anyway and Remus doesn’t feel like pulling the trigger on himself today at least.

Remus is twenty one and he helps rob his first casino.

Which seems insane, because Remus is a lot of things, but he wasn’t really a lawbreaker until that moment he talked the man who could shapeshift into anyone straight through the four levels of security and the cameras and figured out the codes that he needed to get in to the vault and the path he needed to take out, which led him all the way up the stairs to Remus’s hotel room.

There’s enough money on the floor to fix the world hunger. The man, his partner in crime, the shapeshifter sits in the middle of it like a dragon watchings his hoard counting scribbling mathematics on the hotel provided pad of paper so that he can count it all. His shapeshift is off, allowing Remus a look at his green scales and yellow eye without all the blood.

He’s grinning like the cat that caught that little canary. Remus thinks its a good look on him.

Remus holds one of his poker chips in his hand, a Barney that wandered off from the casino floor and found its way to Remus’s hotel room.

“So,” He says, because silence has never been his type of thing, “What now? We split ways?”

The man makes another mark on his pad of paper shuffling through the green papers. “I’m afraid not. You still owe me.”

“What?” Remus turns to face him, and if there’s a spark in his chest, a nudge of excitement, well who can blame him?  Its not like hes spent his whole life waiting for people to leave him.

Another dash on the paper. “We made a deal, unless you’ve forgotten. You said that if I could figure out how you were cheating, you’d do one thing that I want you to do.”

Remus snorted and waved to the money around them, “What do you call this?”

“This?” The man gave him a shark-like smile, “You did this of your own violation!” He held up a wad of cash, a smug superior smile on his face, that makes his fangs glisten.

“I seem to recall you asking,” Remus challenges.

“Not in this timeline, Love Muffin,” The man throws the cash at him. “You still have blood on your face by the way.”

Remus lets the cash fall to the floor because money is nice, but there’s something much nicer about the way that this man is looking at him, the way he’s  _ still  _ looking at him, like Remus is something more than a nuisance, more than a distraction, more than an unwanted,  _ frustrating  _ intrusion. 

“What do you want?” Remus says, because he hasn’t looked ahead this far yet and the uncharacteristic fear in his chest is slowly turning all his organs to butterflies. 

He knows what he wants this man to say, knows what he wants to hear come out of this man's mouth and he thinks that if he looks in the future and its not what happens, Remus will surely explode right there in his (their) room. 

“Hm?” The man says tapping his hotel offered pencil to his chin. “Well, you did say anything I wanted right? Anything at all?”

Remus nods, rolling his finger over the snake design on his stolen poker chip.

“Well then, the one thing I want…” He hesitates, “...is for us to stick together. I think we make quite the team, don’t you? My name is Dee.”

“Remus,” He chokes, because suddenly there doesn’t seem to be enough air in the world, and he’s afraid if he inhales too deeply trying to get more, the whole reality will shatter.

Dee makes another mark on the paper. “Well Remus,” He says, “Any other places you’d like to rob with me?”

Remus is twenty one and he thinks that this is the best birthday he’s ever had.


	3. Ain't it Grand?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re a super villain!” The kid continues on, looking determined under his stupid dimestore mask.
> 
> “I do hope you’ll forgive me, Dear,” Dee says to Remus again, although he hasn’t looked away from the teacup-size nuisance that nearly flambeed him a moment ago, “I’m about to add assault on a minor to our long, wonderful list of crimes.”
> 
> ***  
> aka Remus begins to discover more downsides to seeing the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> are you guys ready for 24 pages of Remus angst?

Remus is twenty one and he knows that something is wrong with him.

He isn’t sure what words there are to describe exactly what’s wrong with him-- it’s more instinctual than physical. More of a looming dread over his shoulder no one else can see, a whisper in his ear no one else can hear, a scent in the air no one else can smell. It’s something that showed up not too long ago, and he hasn’t been able to shake. 

“What’s it like?” Remus asks, with his feet tossed up on the other half of the booth seat and his arms crossed behind his head. The waitress is long gone and so are his pancakes, although the pools of syrup up remain like a bloody battlefield.

“Come again?” Dee asks from where he’s stationed, using the face of a college kid they noted in a gas station two states over. Remus doesn’t necessarily hate this one-- not that he really ever hates any of them-- but this one is definitely an improvement: scattered freckles, sun bleached hair, and long lashes that make his face so soft. Remus likes the innocence of the look, and so did their waitress because she had given them a sly little discount when Dee batted his eyelashes at her.

It makes something stir in Remus, it makes him laugh. Because pretty little Mykayla from Nowhere, Wherever, USA is never going to be privy to the sight of Dee’s beautiful scales. She might think she’s worth something now, worth a kiss, a wink, and a phone number, but she is not, and never will be, worth the glimmering truth that Dee’s obscuring.

And somehow, Remus  _ is _ .

“Your thingy-ma-jig,” Remus says vaguely, because he knows if he keeps dancing around the topic Dee will look up from that phone of his and give him a brief flash of those very real blue-grey eyes, the ones that he was born with the ones he doesn’t show anyone else. “The thing!”

He doesn’t answer for a moment-- too busy tapping on his phone, making a search, responding to an email, sending a text message to 911, hiring a hitman to take Remus out. It's fun to watch his eyes slide across the screen, hardening and softening with the news, his lips twitching up and down with his responses. 

( _ “I do  _ so  _ have a poker face!”  _ Dee had said weeks ago,  _ “A very good one-- stop laughing! Remus! I do!” _ )

“Clearer, Remus,” Dee says eventually, reaching blindly to grab his last piece of bacon. Remus is tempted for a moment to shove his empty plate forward, shove it into the place where Dee was grabbing--

\--- _ ”Remus why?” Dee asks with an irritated huff as he pulls back his syrup covered hand. “Was that necessary?” _

_ “As necessary as the Earth spinning around the sun!”--- _

\--- _ ”Remus why?” Dee asks with an irritated huff as he pulls back his syrup covered hand. “Was that necessary?” _

_ “As necessary as the Earth spinning around the sun!”--- _

But in the end he lets Dee go without. And Remus shakes off the uneasy feeling that appears in his gut suddenly. 

Dee bites into the bacon and swipes his screen.

“Deeeeee!” Remus whines pushing himself suddenly onto the table and tossing his feet back to the ground where they completely coincidentally jolt Dee’s legs. “Pay attention to me!”

“I don’t remember becoming a mother to a needy three-year-old,” Dee says, but, but, but! He flicks his eyes up to meet Remus’s and for just a second they turn that foggy blue and his teeth sharpen just enough in his smile. “Allow me just a moment more, my dear. Business, business.”

“You never do any fun business. It's all “let’s pay taxes” and “sign paperwork”!” Remus protests, running the side of his boot down Dee’s calf.

“But taxes are so much  _ fun _ , Remus!” Dee says with fake enthusiasm, “Look at how much fun I’m having with Kyle, my Certified Tax Expert!”

“It's not as much fun as you could be having with me right now on this table.”

Dee’s expression is somewhere between unimpressed and disbelief, as if after all this time of travelling around with Remus, he still can’t believe that Remus has the audacity to just shout out things like that in public. Remus thinks it's very sexy of him, of both of them.

“We are in public,” Dee says, flicking his tongue around his teeth, those sharp little fangs piercing his facade of a mundane college student.

“I don’t hear you denying it, Double Dee!” Remus counters, and taps his boot over Dee’s perfectly polished dress shoes.

The Shapeshifter gives him a considering look and clicks his phone to the locked screen. Remus feels each second tick by with a thrill in his chest that has no right to be there. Dee’s gaze is a weight of its own, a smothering blanket, a crushing boulder, a lethal threat that promises regret if Remus is the first to look away. His lips are soft and pink and so very kissable.

Remus wonders ideally if Dee knows how kissable he is.

Its seemed dumb that Dee wouldn’t know. Remus has seen him speak French fluent enough to talk his way into an extravagant affluent party while drunk off his ass, seen him do ten step multiplication processes in his head while he was counting up his stolen cash, seen him plot an escape route from a couple dozen locations while evading the police without even having to change his appearance at all. Dee is so smart, that Remus can’t possibly believe that he isn’t completely aware of how nice his lips would feel on Remus’ own--

\-- _ He tastes like french toast, like eggs, like syrup. But that’s the only thing sweet about him: the moment Remus gets lost in the kiss, the moment that Dee gets over his shock, the moment that he starts actively kissing back, Dee takes control. His fangs prick and pull and Remus tastes blood. Dee’s hands cup either side of his face and draw him over the table, pulling him straight into the plate of syrup but neither of them pay much attention at all. _

_ “Hey!” That pesky annoying little waitress yells, “Hey!” And Remus flips her the bird for her troubles-- _

_ \--He tastes like french toast, like eggs, like syrup. But the only thing sweet about him is the way he tastes: the moment Remus gets lost in the kiss, the moment that Dee gets over his shock, the moment that he starts actively kissing back, Dee takes control. His fangs prick and pull and Remus tastes blood. Dee’s hands cup either side of his face and draw him over the table, pulling him straight into the plate of syrup but neither of them pay much attention at all. _

_ “Hey!” That pesky annoying little waitress yells, “Hey!” And Remus flips her the bird for her troubles-- _

_ \--He tastes like french toast, like eggs, like syrup. But the only thing sweet about him is the way he tastes: the moment Remus gets lost in the kiss, the moment that Dee gets over his shock, the moment that he starts actively kissing back, Dee takes control. His fangs prick and pull and Remus tastes blood. Dee’s hands cup either side of his face and draw him over the table, pulling him straight into the plate of syrup but neither of them pay much attention at all. _

_ “Hey!” That pesky annoying little waitress yells, “Hey!” And Remus flips her the bird for her troubles-- _

Remus blinks twice, and then another time. He swears for a moment there’s blood in the back of his throat, swears for a moment that he’s still in the future, swears for a moment that he couldn’t turn off his power the way he’s always been able to.

But that’s ridiculous right?

Right?

“-ink, Remus?” Dee says. 

Remus focuses back on his partner-- business partner, whom he has never, ever kissed before-- and notes the way that the other is looking at him. Its his “unreadable” face. The one that is supposed to block everyone from knowing exactly what he’s thinking. His poker face. 

But Remus has died for him a countless number of times and vise versa. There’s nothing unreadable about him when Remus has seen him bleed out, seen him get shot, seen him get run over, and beaten, and strangled.

“You spaced out for a moment, dear,” He says, although his face reads “Are we in danger? Where is the danger?  _ I will protect you from that danger _ .”

“Oh it's nothing!” Remus says, like his heart hadn’t just jumped into his throat, “Let’s just say your future self was  _ very  _ busy.”

“Was he now,” Dee hums. “Lucky him, then.”

“You could be that lucky too, DeeDee!” Remus offers, “If you stopped doing all that business nonsense.”

It wouldn’t take much for one of these futures to come true, even the most outrageous one where they get arrested and leave the whole state running with just the clothes on their backs and the smiles on their faces. It wouldn’t take much for Remus to dramatically change the course of their day, their week, their lives.

Its almost silly. In a fun way. 

They could spend the rest of their lives together and Remus doesn’t think it would ever stop being silly.

“Alright,” Dee says with a playful sigh, “alright. I hear you, my lovely Soothsayer.” He folds his hands and gives Remus his undivided attention. “What does the future bring us?”

Its theatrical, and Remus likes it as much as he hates it. After all, Roman was theatrical too, and Roman had ruined Remus with just a handful of words. Who was to stop history from repeating itself now? Who was to stop Dee from one day waking up and realizing he didn’t need Remus draping over his shoulder, or nudging him during meals, or begging for attention? Who was to stop the great, mystical deity out there from playing another cruel joke on Remus?

“The future,” Remus sings, “brings us one very important question! What does it feel like to do your thing?”

“My thing?” Dee repeats, tilting his head. “You mean…?” His eyes flash between blue-grey, green, brown and yellow, before settling to a caramel that he hadn’t had before.

Remus nods cupping his cheek in his hand. It's kinda weird. Shouldn’t this have been a question he’d asked weeks ago? Before they left the Basilisk Casino, before they hijacked that car, before they blew through all those gas stations, the small shopping centers, the banks after hours, the jewelers--??

Dee taps a hand on the table. “I suppose it's….much like changing clothes? I can’t imagine another metaphor to explain it.”

Remus imagines Dee taking off the skin he’s wearing like it's a onesie, unzipping the folds of the flesh from the crook of his collarbone and then dragging it straight down the middle of his chest like some sort of skin stealing alien. Dee, stationary, levels him with a look that suggests he knows  _ exactly  _ what Remus was imagining without him saying a word.

“I mean,” The man says, and huffs, “It's like wearing a familiar T-shirt, or a favorite pair of pants. Some feel better than others-- I personally prefer male presenting  _ human _ forms and while I  _ can  _ play the part of other genders and animals, it's like wearing a shirt that’s too small, or too tight, or I don’t know!” Dee squints at Remus, “Why? Are you planning something?”

“Are you nervous?”

“With you?” Dee says, leaning forward and,  _ oh. _

The light hits him just right, just through the windows, turning him into a ridiculous renaissance painting of glowing pale skin, pink kissable lips, and mysterious eyes. He looks surreal all of a sudden, sticking out of the backdrop of this IHOP restaurant like he was photoshopped into the scene: impossible to miss, impossible to look away from.

Dee smiles, “How could I ever be nervous with you, Remus?”

Remus doesn’t know he’s holding his own breath until Dee stands up and gathers his jacket and his phone and Remus’s lungs cry for mercy.

“Come along, Pythia,” Dee says, “We have things to do.”

“Pythia?” Remus repeats, “Gonna bury me alive, Nero?” He jumps up like the thought excites him. Maybe it does.

Maybe something is actually wrong with him and it's not just a feeling.

Dee makes a face, “And get dirt under my nails?” He flourishes his hands as if to ward off the very thought. “Besides, I would undoubtedly miss your company.”

Remus has no reason to feel as touched as he does. Its such a dumb little thing to say-- Dee isn’t even looking at him as he says it, probably isn’t thinking about it anymore than he’s thinking about the smile he’s tossing over his shoulder at that waitress as they leave or the way he’s holding the door open for Remus they go. It means less than nothing to him.

It means everything to Remus.

It feels like a kick to the chest, like a punch to the gut, like a car running him over and leaving him for dead in the middle of the street. Remus can’t breathe and its the most glorious feeling to ever have graced him.

Because Dee…Dee wants him here.

And no one has ever really wanted Roman’s messed up, drugged up, annoying little brother.

_ (“I don’t need you.”)  _

Roman had been quite clear about that.

Dee slides into the driver’s seat of the car they had bought. He likes to drive, likes to be in control, and Remus likes lying down in the passenger seat and talking about whatever while they quibble over the radio station and drive without a destination in mind.

“Where are we going?” Remus asks--

_ \--Dee’s scales make an appearance, glittering in all that in green and great and glorious. “You reminded me of clothes.” He said, “And I think it's about time you stopped dressing like you’re living from a Goodwill Bin.” _

_ “Goodwill?” Remus pretends to be offended, “I was going for dumpster.”-- _

_ \--Dee’s scales make an appearance, glittering in all that in green and great and glorious. “You reminded me of clothes.” He said, “And I think it's about time you stopped dressing like you’re living from a Goodwill Bin.” _

_ “Goodwill?” Remus pretends to be offended, “I was going for dumpster.”-- _

Dee’s scales make an appearance, glittering in all that in green and great and glorious. “You reminded me of clothes.” He said, “And I think it's about time you stopped dressing like you’re from living a Goodwill Bin.”

“Goodwill?” Remus pretends to be offended, pretends to be completely fine, pretends like that didn’t happen, “I was going for dumpster.”

And where everyone else would crinkle their noses and look away, Dee throws back his head and laughs that wonderful angelic laugh of his. It's hypnotizing to hear: a siren’s song that will surely end up in his death one day. But the sound of it, ringing so freely in the air, is enough to wash away every other thought that Remus is having.

There’s something wrong with Remus, but he can hardly focus on that when Dee is right beside him.

They drive into town, or out of town, or somewhere. Remus doesn’t pay that much attention. Once Dee turns on the radio and focuses on not crashing the car, the uneasy feeling comes back.

Remus thinks is a bit like a snake wriggling around, twisting and turning as it tries to consume itself before Remus’s stomach acids consume it. When Dee takes a particularly sharp turn the snake wraps itself up to Remus’s lungs and plays his ribcage like a xylophone. And wouldn’t that be a sight to see?

They’re in the car for about forty five minutes, and Remus feels each and every one of them. His armpits itch, his legs keep chafing against each other, his foot can’t stay put. His phone opens for him to play any one of the fifty billion games he has on it and yet he only stares at the clock ticking, tapping the screen whenever it threatens to sleep.

They’re in the car for forty five minutes before Dee sighs, reaches forward, and turns down the radio. 

“I know we have an agreement,” Dee starts which makes Remus want to lean over and turn the music back up--

\--and Remus does because, because, because. He doesn’t check the future. He doesn’t think about it. He really should know better.

Dee’s shoulders drop and he looks away from the road just quick enough to be absolutely offended that Remus actually did that. He turns it back down and slaps Remus’s hand away when he goes to turn it back up.

The car jerks and before Remus knows what is going on-- oh fuck Remus doens’t think that he’s ever thought  _ that  _ before-- before he can get a grasp of what is happening, Dee is pulling along the shoulder and then parks. 

“Remus,” Dee says, squeezing the steering wheel.

“Something wrong?” Remus says as innocently as he can, which is pretty innocently considering he took lessons from fucking  _ Roman  _ at one point. “I was just enjoying your delightful music choice!”

“You hate classical,” Dee points out. “Which means that you are avoiding--”

Remus turns the dial so loud he feels the fucking air vibrate with the crescendo of violins. “SORRY WHAT WAS THAT?” 

Dee glares at him and then, with all the clever, stupid, unfairness of a master manipulator, Dee’s ears fold right into his head. Which of course leaves Remus in a car with music so loud it’s liable to break his own eardrums and Dee staring at him.

Stubbornness is a learned trait. Remus has always had a backbone of steel; it was necessary when he had to explain again and again and again and  _ again  _ that he could see the future and  _ Roman please lets not take that back walking path through the forest to get home. Why? Oh uh, because uh….  _ It was necessary when he had to harass his mother into wearing smaller heels and his dad into wearing a seat belt while driving. It was necessary when he cared so much about them and the doctors said that it was just an unfortunate case of extreme paranoia with lifelike hallucinations.

Stubbornness is something that Remus has had in spades since the moment that he was seventeen and eleven minutes younger than Roman and he  _ still cared about it _ . It’s what kept him moving, kept him living, kept him from going back.

Stubbornness lasts him all of fifteen seconds before he caves and turns the music back down with only a slight ringing in his ears.

Dee waits until Remus shift back in his seat before replacing his stupid, dumb ears and letting go of the steering wheel. “Remus,” He says.

“You’re a little fucker, aren't you,” Remus says, staring out the window. “It's not fair that you can just slurp your ears into your body.”

“Slurp?” Dee sounds mildly disgusted at his word choice.

Remus doesn’t flinch. He  _ doesn’t. _

Dee rubs the side of his face as if the scales that aren’t visible are itching. “Look Remus,” He says--

\--- _ ”I know we made that promise, that day after we met that we’d keep this strictly professional.” Dee sounds particularly sour about it, like it wasn’t something that had happened months ago, like they weren’t allowed to change their minds ever, like words of the past met anything to a man like Remus who quite literally lived in the future. “I know we said that feelings are off the table for discussions, but I don’t…” _

_ He hesitates like he’s hoping Remus will speak up and say whatever he’s hinting at. _

_ Remus doesn’t. _

_ Dee huffs, “I’m just...You mean a lot to me, okay Remus. This?” He motions between them, “us? We’re an investment. You’ve been acting--” _

_ “An investment?” Remus repeats, and suddenly his blood is racing in his head and his vision narrows, “You mean like...the fucking bank? What? Like you’re putting money into this and you expect some big payout in the end?” Remus twists to motion to the suitcases in the backseat, “And this isn’t it?” _

_ “That’s not--” _

_ “Or is your investment your goddamn time, Dee?” Remus isn’t sure where the words are coming from, where the anger is coming from, where this conversation is going. “When this doesn’t end up how you want, are you gonna cut your losses? Are you gonna regret this? All of this?” _

_ “Remus!” Dee snaps, “Stop putting words in my mouth!” _

_ “You aren’t denying them!” _

_ “Why do I need to deny them?” He shoots back, “Obviously, they are--” _

_ Remus unbuckles and kicks his door open. _

_ “Remus!” _

_ “Fuck Off!” Remus storms away from the car, their car, Dee’s car. He’s vaguely aware that Dee is shouting after him, words and empty curses and nothing that Remus wants to hear when the air itself feels abrasive on his skin, like he’d somehow become allergic to the oxygen, like he needs to tear his own skin off and find a new one to wear. _

_ He gets all of another six steps before suddenly Dee is there, grabbing his hand, and Remus reacts as violently as he can: by turning into the tug on his hand and curling his fingers into a fist and introducing Dee’s so-kissable face to his knuckles. Dee lets him go. _

_ And Remus doesn’t feel a single bit better. _

_ Because now he’s punched Dee and the air is still corroding his skin and his anger is boiling in his chest and that  _ bad feeling(™)  _ hasn’t gone away. Dee’s nose is bleeding the same way that Remus’s does after he looks at too many futures, looks for too long, looks and sees himself  _ killing his brother. 

_ Dee hisses in pain, holding his hands over his mouth, under his nose, and breathes through the agony that is Shifting When He’s Got Noticeable Injuries. _

_ “Remus.” Dee says, between labored breaths. _

_ It's the same way that his mother who just wanted him to shut up said his name, the same way his dad who just wanted him to calm down said it and the same way Roman who just wanted him to be normal said it and the kids at school who just wanted him to go away said it and the doctors who just wanted him to be curable said it. It's the same way that seventeen-year-old Remus said his own name to his reflection in the gas station bathroom shaking from head to toe after he saw himself get hit by a car for the first time. _

_ “Remus,” Dee says, “I didn’t mean it like that.” _

_ Remus doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure he can if he’d tried. _

_ Blood drips between his hands and hits the gravel of the shoulder with bright red and warm colors. _

_ “Every day with you is a payout,” Dee says, “Yeah, I’ll be the first to say the money is nice, but getting to see you smile? Getting to hear your voice first thing in the morning? Getting to go on long car trips and watching you try to read a map, getting to see you get excited over things I don’t even understand, getting to laugh when you say something completely inappropriate in a public setting with no remorse or hesitation? Remus, I---” _

_ “Don’t say you love me,” Remus says, strangled “Because you don’t. You can’t.” _

_ “There is not a single person on this planet who gets to tell me what I can and can’t do!” Dee spits. “I didn’t intend to fall in love with you Remus! But you don’t get to tell me what my feelings are!” _

_ Remus can’t breathe. He can’t breathe and his skin is on fire and his chest is alight with  _ something.  _ Can he still call it anger when he wants to run as far as he can? _

_ Dee inhales, holds, two, three, four, five seconds, and the exhales for twice as long. “Fine,” He says. “Fine, whatever, you’re right. I lied. I hate you and I’m going to kill you some time soon and stash your body in a dumpster for some opposums to eat.” He turns away, “Just...fucking….tell me if something is wrong, will you? That’s all I want.”---- _

\---“I know we made that promise, that day after we met that we’d keep this strictly professional.” Dee sounds particularly sour about it, like it wasn’t something that had happened months ago, like they weren’t allowed to change their minds ever, like words of the past met anything to a man like Remus who quite literally lived in the future. “I know--”

“Tell you when things are wrong,” Remus says, dismissively. “Got it.” 

Dee straightens, frowning like the words he didn’t get to say left a bad taste. Remus thinks that it can’t be any worse than the blood his future self got to choke on. 

“We’re good!” Remus says, “Peachy, even! Flawless! Marvelous! Solid!”

Dee reaches over and opens the glove box by Remus’s knees. “I’m  _ sure  _ we are.” He says with just enough doubt that Remus knows he hasn’t gotten away with anything. Can Remus feel guilty for something that hasn’t even happened? Something that isn’t going to happen?

Dee hands him a travel pack of tissues that Remus doesn’t remember buying. Remus frowns at them.

“For your nosebleed, Remus,” Dee says.

And oh, Remus hadn’t even noticed. Isn’t that weird? The back of his entire mouth tastes like blood and eggs and syrup and there’s scarlet dripping down his front so easily that Remus’s stomach clenches.  How does he keep forgetting how much he hates that color?

There’s something wrong with Remus and this might be proof of that.

“Promise me?” Dee asks. “I know you’ve been acting off, Re. But I trust you. If it's something I’m doing, promise me you’ll tell me?”

Remus twists the tissues between his fingers, feeling his atoms buzz under his skin, like a bunch of bees trying to escape while that snake in his chest breaks his ribcage xylophone. “Cross my heart and hope to die, Dee.”

Dee nods, satisfied. He puts his hands back on the steering wheel. “Not too soon, I hope.” He offers a bit of his fang in a smile, “Shopping is always more fun with you, Dearest.”

Remus’s heart doesn’t twist. It  _ doesn’t _ .

That feeling over his shoulder lessens a little. 

Remus is twenty one, and there’s something wrong with him. He just doesn’t realize the extent of it yet.

Shopping with Dee is fun. 

A few weeks back Dee had insisted on taking him shopping the first time, and replaced his suitcase of thrift clothes with straight-off-the-line silks, several flannels, and smart looking button ups. Remus kept every outfit just to humor the other; He actually rotated through three half cut shirts of various colors that all read “THOT” and showed off his belly. 

It made Dee crazy, but it also wasn’t like Dee was telling him to  _ stop _ . Especially not when the warmer weather meant Remus broke out his jean shorts and fishnets.

The shapeshifter liked to think he was sly, clever, and subtle, but Remus had spent far too many futures exchanging saliva with him to be fooled. Dee was a  _ biter  _ and Remus hadn’t been aware he was into that until he felt those fucking fangs of the first time (and every time after that).

The only thing that Dee had bought him that he actually wore was the black leather jacket. It was nice. Remus remembers looking at one similar back when he was seventeen and still so stupid and his mom had saw him eyeing it and put her foot down.

_ “Absolutely not, Remus,” _ she had said,  _ “You’d look like a delinquent!”  _

Sometimes he thinks about stopping by a payphone and telling her exactly what he had done with his life. He’d tell her all about where he went after he realized that none of them cared to listen to him, he’d tell her how he was rich, how he got that money, how he was always just one criminal act away from being caught and arrested and  _ Mom, isn’t that so much worse than just looking like a delinquent?  _

“I guess you should have just bought me that jacket,” Remus would laugh into the receiver, as his mother has a heart attack on the other end, to which the ambulance would get there just in time to help her with.

It wouldn’t feel as satisfying as he thought it would, so he’d asked Dee if they could rob a jewelry store/ bank/ high-end boutique/celebrity mansion instead. And Dee  _ loves  _ it when Remus is the one bullheading a heist. His blue-grey eyes light up and his hands dance in the air when he throws out suggestions. 

So shopping with Dee is great.

They have about two bags a piece when they blow through another high price shopping center despite the bits of blood on Remus’s chest, paying with cash that they liberated from a couple of vaults in a bank at least a state ago. The cashiers in two of the places are extra super nice to them, and the third place offers a personal assistant to help them although Dee chuckles at them and brushes his hand against the small of Remus’s back.

“If you pick out at least one shirt,” Dee says, while picking through a series of smart looking ties, “We can go look at wedding rings.”---

\--- _ “To get married? Or to fence?” Remus says leaning back against another display, “Or do you not have a preference?”--- _

\--- _ “To get married? Or to fence?” Remus says plucking a black tie with a yellow snake from the shapeshifter’s hands and using it to hook it around Dee until their chests are pressed together. “Or do you not have a preference?” _ \---

\--- _ “To get married? Or to fence?” Remus says plucking a black tie with a yellow snake from the shapeshifter’s hands and using it to hook it around Dee until their chests are pressed together. “Or do you not have a preference?” _ \---

\--- _ “To get married? Or to fence?” Remus says plucking a black tie with a yellow snake from the shapeshifter’s hands and using it to hook it around Dee until their chests are pressed together. “Or do you not have a preference?” _ \---

Remus blinks, hesitating for a moment more than he means to. “To get married? Or to fence?” He watches as Dee hooks the yellow snake tie back on the rack. “I think I have a preference.”

Dee glances back at him. His gaze is narrowed, but Remus picks up the snake tie up again and holds it out for him. Dee takes it back and puts away the others that he had been looking at.

“I was intending to fence them,” Dee admits, with just a bit of a flush, “Though, getting married...is that something we should be considering at this stage in our lives?”

Remus tries not to think about corroding skin, or blood on gravel, or words that Dee hasn’t said and doesn’t mean. 

“Any shirt?” Remus asks, because changing the topic is easier than answering.

“It has to fit and it has to look presentable.” Dee says.

Remus makes a face, and Dee pokes him in the cheek. “Honestly, darling,” He says, in a southern accent that Remus is sure he’s pulled out for fun at this point, “That’s just the bare minimum. I’ve decided to start small.” 

Remus tries to keep the sour look off his face, but from the way that Dee bites the inside of his cheek he knows how he did. 

“These clothes suck,” Remus tells him, and it's most  _ definitely  _ a whine. “Dee, you can literally turn into a dragon. Why would you want to wear clothes like these when you can be a  _ dragon? _ ”

“It's the aesthetic, my dear. Rich clothes mean a rich person, and I do so very much enjoy looking- and being- richer than others.”

“But you could be a  _ dragon.”  _ Remus repeats, because really, is Dee just not hearing him? “You could be rich and be a hundred feet long with giant wings and sharp teeth and just step on people who annoy us. A  _ Dragon _ !”

Dee laughs like someone who is rich and can be a fire breathing dragon at any moment and yet still chooses to wear shirts with collars. Remus thinks it would be sexy of him-- well, actually, it  _ is  _ sexy of him. Dee is sexy. He’d been knew.

Remus flutters over the shirts, all of them looking more uncomfortable than the last. Honestly, Remus doesn’t know why he wasn’t fine in his own outfit. What, do rich people not know everyone had legs and midriffs underneath their clothes?

Remus picks out an offending neon green shirt in a box that comes with a fancy tie and whatever. It makes his own eyes hurt to look at it so he throws it at Dee.

“This is not your size,” Dee says.

“I’m starting to think that you’re trying to get me to pick out my funeral outfit.”

“And you want to be buried in this?”

Remus grabs his chest, “Don’t be ridiculous Dee! Why would I want to be wearing  _ clothes _ at my own wake? Are you trying to take the “fun” out of “funeral”?”

“And if I am?” Dee says without really missing a beat. So maybe that’s why Remus likes him so much. Because after months and months of searching for that one phrase, the one comment, the one statement that's too much, he still hasn’t found it. 

Dee should have run away by now-- Remus knows this fact, the way he knows the fifty million futures are going to end up. Dee should have run after they robbed that casino, after Remus chose to get them driven out of Oklahoma for funsies, after Remus wouldn’t stop making suggestive comments about the two of them. Dee should have run and never looked back.

You know, like  _ every other person in Remus’s life. _

But no matter which future he enacts, no matter how many he looks at, no matter what he does.

There’s always  _ Dee _ . There’s always  _ blood on the gravel _ . There’s always  _ those words _ . 

That he doesn’t mean, can’t mean, won’t mean. 

Remus is twenty one and whatever it is between them is wrong, despite how much he really wants it.

“If you are then you should get me a wedding ring,” Remus says tugging at a button on another shirt, pulling it loose, and imagining eating, because choking to death is easier than any other thought he’s having.

“Oh?” Dee plucks the button from his hand before he can put it in his mouth and tosses it across the store, like the good person he is. “And why would that be?”

Remus pouts. “Gotta marry me for the life insurance, Jekyll and Lies!”

Dee’s lips quirk, up and down, like a worm wriggling under a blazing sun. He pulls on his poker face, and Remus reads between the lines as him being  _ frustrated _ .

“Oh?” Dee says between gritted teeth, “Is that the only reason?”

“Wha--??”

Dee throws the offending green shirt back on the rack and grabs Remus by the forearm. Before he can get out another very confused word Dee is dragging him towards the store entrance without an item to buy. The employees blink at them, but Dee bulldozes his way back out of the door with a warpath that would surely put Alexander the Great to shame--

_ \---The Jewelry Store flings into view a cute little shop with barely anyone nearby and windows with dark backdrops and glittering jewels that probably would cost them most of the fortune they’ve amassed together.  _

_ Remus’s heart jumps to his throat, out of his throat, it lands on his tongue and he chews his way through it as Dee drags him towards the shop.-- _

_ \---The Jewelry Store flings into view, a cute little shop with barely anyone nearby and windows with dark backdrops and glittering jewels that probably would cost them most of the fortune they’ve amassed together.  _

_ Remus’s heart jumps to his throat, out of his throat, it lands on his tongue and he chews his way through it as Dee drags him towards the shop. The doors are clear glass and the handles are sleek black, but Remus isn’t looking at them as much as looking around them at the curious bystanders who follow them with their eyes-- _

_ \---The Jewelry Store flings into view, a cute little shop with barely anyone nearby and windows with dark backdrops and glittering jewels that probably would cost them most of the fortune they’ve amassed together.  _

_ Remus’s heart jumps to his throat, out of his throat, it lands on his tongue and he chews his way through it as Dee drags him towards the shop. The doors are clear glass and the handles are sleek black, but Remus isn’t looking at them as much as looking inside where there are two jewelry store employees pressed against the back wall and a guy pointing a gun at them and a kid, a  _ **_kid_ ** _ flourishing his hands out-- _

_ \---The Jewelry Store flings into view, a cute little shop with barely anyone nearby and windows with dark backdrops and glittering jewels that probably would cost them most of the fortune they’ve amassed together.  _

_ Remus’s heart jumps to his throat, out of his throat, it lands on his tongue and he chews his way through it as Dee drags him towards the shop. _

_ “Dee!” _

_ But Dee isn’t listening, because, because, because, because--- _

“Dee!” Remus yells anyway. 

But Dee isn’t listening for some stupid reason and the Jewelry Store flings into view, a cute little shop with barely anyone nearby and windows with dark backdrops and glittering jewels that probably would cost them most of the fortune they’ve amassed together. 

Remus’s heart jumps to his throat, out of his throat, it lands on his tongue and he chews his way through it as Dee grabs the steel black handles of the glass doors and yanks them open. 

Remus shoves his entire weight sideways, sprawling over Dee, hitting the floor heavily, slamming his chin to the ground, and biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood. “FIRE!”

The glass doors shatter over them, raining twinkling stars over Remus’s back and a violent, furious explosion. Heat seers into them, over them, punching through them both like a physical blow to their bodies. The air  _ burns _ , too hot to breathe, too hot to see through, too  _ hot _ .

A body flies over them, probably, maybe, definitely, and slammed wetly against the internal decorative plant beds that have been all over the mall so far. Flames lick off the body, paralleling the godawful screaming of the man. The crowd, the other shoppers, the unsuspecting normal people panic. They scream. They cry. They run.

And yet all Remus can see is Dee on the floor of the mall, eyes empty, mouth open, scales out and body devoured by flames. Gone  _ gone gone gone-- _

“Remus!” Dee yells, because he’s not dead yet, because he hadn’t been burned alive, because Remus had changed the future. He’s alive.

His heartbeat is there, and Remus can feel it from where he’s pressed against Dee covering him entirely. His breathing is warm against Remus’s cheeks, his hands on Remus’s chest. His stolen appearance is still functioning.

_ He’s alive. _

But for some reason Remus’s brain can’t get with the program.

He tastes ashes in his mouth, burning his lungs, and ripping through the dryness of his mouth. The air is hot, steaming, shimmering with the threat of more fire.

“Remus,” Dee is suddenly in front of him, cupping his cheeks so sweetly, blue-grey eyes boring into his, “Remus, are you okay?”

He’s not. 

Remus is twenty one years old and he just watched Dee die  _ again  _ but this time it was unexpected and they weren’t even doing anything illegal and it just  _ happened  _ and he  _ died _ and Remus is not okay.

There’s something wrong. Everything is wrong. 

His mouth opens but none of that comes out. He’s shaking.

Dee’s eyes harden on something beyond him, harden and darken and his mouth pulls into a sneer. “Breathe for me, Dear,” He says softly, “and forgive me. There’s a small task I have to do. I’ll be right back.”

He steps back, pulls back, and Remus’s head follows him on instinct. Remus is kneeling on the ground, although he definitely doesn’t remember getting here at all. Dee stands up, runs his fingers through Remus’s hair and then strolls directly towards the child and the man on fire. 

There’s an elegance in his walk, Remus notes distantly. An elegance that makes him glide across the floor, flowing between panicking people, squaring his shoulders and tilting his chin up so he can look down at his opponent.

Opponent? 

“Hey!” Dee yells sharply, cuttingly, loudly. He slices through the panic like a knife through warm butter, or a truck through a red light, or a bullet straight through flesh.

“Hey!” Dee yells, and suddenly everyone is looking at him as he rushes towards the burned man. “Just what the  _ fuck  _ do you think you are doing, brat?!”

The brat in question, the child who had been in the jewelry shop, the juvenile who had flourished his hands outward and made fire appear in the air, _ that kid  _ stops where he’s standing. And oh god he’s wearing some sort of outfit-- its like Halloween came early! Black clothes, with an orange flame over his chest and an orange mask tied around his face like he’s some sort of superhero.

At the oldest? This kid might be  _ twelve _ . And there’s no mask hiding that fact away.

“Official Hero business, sir!” The  _ child  _ says and Remus wants to laugh, thinks he laughs, does actually laugh. Because this is a joke isn’t it? An elaborate joke? There are people nearby who stopped in their panic when Dee stepped up, who are holding their breaths, who are looking at Remus like he’s finally lost it.

“Official hero--” Dee also thinks this is funny, and Remus knows because of the way his eyebrows quirk. “ _ Where _ are your parents?” Without waiting for an answer Dee turns to a woman crouching nearby, “Are you his mother? This is so irresponsible!”

Flames flicker around the child as he stomps his foot, “Move out of the way, sir! I’m the official superhero of this city, Flamestrike!”

“What you are is a child,” Dee says sharply, before turning back to the woman, “Call an ambulance for this man will you? Those burns--”

“He’s a villain!” The kid cuts in, “He’s going to jail!”

“Will someone please go find his parents!” Dee yells. "Call an ambulance, and someone check to make sure he’s still breathing. And get me a clean sheet! We need to cover the burns with something that won’t leave anything in the wound!"

Remus sways where he is kneeling on the floor. Dee sweeps the area with a flourish of his hands, dismissing the child with just a word, throwing commands to the others nearby, and generally being amazing. It's a cold shut down, a cruel one.

But no one moves at his words, because they're all stupid and for some reason Remus is surprised about that again. Why does he put his faith in people again? Especially when he has the memory of Roman breathing down his neck most days?

But these people are looking between Dee, the adult, the very capable stranger, and this  _ toddler _ like they’re waiting for some stage direction. Remus  _ hates  _ plays, has hated them for forever. It only had a little bit to do with the fact that Roman loved their highschool theatre program so much.

But the air smells like burned flesh and several plants in the decorative planters are still on fire and Remus’s chest still hurts from a lack of oxygen and there’s a man who's so crispy he doesn’t feel anything at all but can’t move a muscle lying over there-- a man whose life is in the balance and Dee is apparently the only one willing to take up that weight.

It's because of that Dee hisses out distastefully.

“Apologies,” Dee says, very unkindly, very dangerously. “Are we waiting for Christmas to come along? This is an emergency, not one of your soaps! Call an ambulance! Get me a sheet! And someone get over here and help me make sure his clothes aren’t stuck in the burns!”

“That man was robbing--” The child tries again.

“Oh, please, shut up!” Dee roars at him, “I could not give a single fuck what this man has done or not done! You are the one at fault here!”

If there was oxygen in the air before, it's gone now. Remus knows this from the sharp loud inhale by nearly a dozen frozen onlookers, from the way the child looks taken aback, from the way that Dee’s eyes flash blue grey and dangerous. The singes on his shirt, the soot on his face, make him look murderous in a way that Remus hasn’t had the pleasure of seeing before.

(Because he never gets mad at Remus, never  _ that  _ mad, never  _ that  _ angry. It doesn’t matter what buttons Remus pushes.)

“Did you think you were  _ special _ ?” Dee's tone starts like a bubbling brook and swiftly crashes over everyone who listens like a  _ tsunami  _ and drowns everyone who wasn’t prepared. “Did Mommy and Daddy tell you your power was one of a kind? Did your friends think it was so cool that you could make fireballs? Did you build a little secret lair in your treehouse?”

The kid takes a step back. Dee takes a step forward, wearing the face of a stranger who has probably never been this livid before in their life.

“What was it, Kid?” He asks, “You had a power and you decided that you know right and wrong, now? You wanted to play superhero so badly you forgot that life isn’t a silly little movie? Please enlighten me on why you have the right to just attack a handful of civilians! Because if it weren’t for my friend you’d be staring at two extra corpses!”

It's him, Remus realizes a second too late. It's him that Dee just mentioned as having saved their lives and it’s him who would have been dead alone with Dee if he hadn’t moved fast enough.

There’s movement, he notes a second later. There’s a woman who takes several hesitant steps forward, and dashes beyond Dee to the burned man. She drops her shopping bags and pulls out a phone, and does those things that Dee had commanded, with all the nervousness of someone trying improv for the first time.

“Thank you,” Dee says to her.

“If you’re…. If you’re helping that man, you’re a villain!” The kid stutters.

And like a shark when there’s blood in the water, Dee laughs. “Us?” He says, stepping in front of the brave woman to block her from the child’s view. “We’re not the ones who just tried to kill two innocent people, kid.”

“Its Flamestrike!” The kid stomps his foot, but he sounds so pitiful, Remus almost feels sorry for him. If it weren’t for the smell of burning flesh, the sight of marred skin, for the memory of a future that didn’t happen-- 

“I’m a hero,” The kid insists, stubborn in all the wrong ways.

Dee growls deep in his throat. “You are  _ not  _ a hero!”

“I am!”

“You don’t have control of your power. You don’t have control of your emotions. You’re the modern day Fires of Rome! You make one mistake and you set a whole building-- the whole  _ city,  _ on fire! You do not get the option of forgetting that there are normal people here!”

Dee looks past the kid to the jewelry store owner, worker, whoever, who is creeping by the shattered glass doors, squeezing an ornate silver cross in her hand. “Tell me, madam--” Dee’s voice is smooth and soothing like the surface of an icy river that promises an unkind demise if she lies to him, “--how much were the items he was attempting to steal?”

It takes a long suffering moment for her to answer. Remus’s breath hovers in his chest for all of it, clinging to the insides of his throat until his eyes itch. His knees grind into the ground, trying to steady him when the whole world feels like it's swaying. 

“Several thousand,” she admits, and Dee almost laughs, but to be fair so does Remus.

“Several thousand!” He repeats to the kid in front of him, “A man’s life is several thousand to you? You would kill a man for several thousand? That’s less than the price of a car!”

“Wha--No!”

Dee waves to the man behind him, to the woman who was kneeling beside him, clutching a phone between her shoulder and her ear.

“But you did!” He says. “ _ You _ did. You! The so-called  _ Hero _ ! Who attempted to extinguish a life over a couple thousand dollars that this man probably wouldn’t have been able to fence, and the store right here most likely had insurance over.

“It's time to face the music,” Dee says softer, sterner, and perhaps unkinder than it needed to be. “You are not a hero, kid.”

_ \--- The child’s eyes glow brightly, burning red with a special type of hatred that Remus is sure only Dee can inspire in someone. He thrusts his hands forward, fingers spread as wide as they can go and lets out a furious screech. _

_ “ITS FLAMESTRIKE!” _

_ Flames explode out from his palms, shooting across the open area towards Dee who didn’t really expect a child to attempt a murder, towards the bystander who was calling that ambulance towards the man who had just tried to rob the jewelry store with a gun that still had the safety on. _

_ And when the sweltering heat subsides, when the screams break, when light dies down and the bile in Remus’s mouth comes back up….all that’s left in the place of all three of them are ashes, flaming plants, and scorch marks on the floor.--- _

_ \---Flames explode out from his palms, shooting across the open area towards Dee who didn’t really expect a child to attempt a murder, towards the bystander who was calling that ambulance towards the man who had just tried to rob the jewelry store with a gun that still had the safety on. _

_ And when the sweltering heat subsides, when the screams break, when light dies down and the bile in Remus’s mouth comes back up….all that’s left in the place of all three of them are ashes, flaming plants, and scorch marks on the floor.-- _

_ \--And when the sweltering heat subsides, when the screams break, when light dies down and the bile in Remus’s mouth comes back up….all that’s left in the place of all three of them are ashes, flaming plants, and scorch marks on the floor.-- _

_ \---And when the sweltering heat subsides, when the screams break, when light dies down and the bile in Remus’s mouth comes back up….all that’s left in the place of all three of them are ashes, flaming plants, and  _ **_scorch marks on the flo_ ** _ \-- _

“FLAMES!” Remus _screams,_ because he can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything from so far away. His heart hammers against his chest as the child’s eyes glow brightly, burning red with a special type of hatred that Remus is sure only Dee can inspire in someone. 

The child thrusts his hands forward, fingers spread as wide as they can go and lets out a furious screech. “ITS FLAMESTRIKE!”

Flames explode out from his palms, shooting across the open area towards Dee, who hears Remus, who isn’t surprised, who sees the attack coming and faces it head on.

And Remus can’t breathe for a second as the sweltering heat sweeps through the open area, as the screams rise up again and light seers into his eyes with crackling, horrific popping noise. It's like popcorn, and all Remus can think of is the noise that the acids in the human stomach make when they’re boiled in an open fire.

The attack cuts off, the flames subside and the kid is left there shaking, screaming, eyes wide and horrified and-- 

“Oh my god,” The kid says softly. “That’s impossible….”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Dee says, grinning with his fangs on display as he brushes off the last of the flames. His body had morphed into a humanoid dragon looking thing: fireproof wings, a spiky tail, and thick iridescent scales interlocking over his entire body, up his neck and covering half his face like a mockery of his true form, “Was that supposed to help prove your point or mine?”

Remus feels floaty. He feels like he’s watching a nightmare, but it's not one of his.

He feels bad. So bad. Wrong.

Terrible. 

“You… you’ve got powers too,” The kid says, and he sounds  _ excited about it. _ As if he had somehow missed the previous five minutes, the previous ninety seconds, the previous heartbeat where he tried to  _ kill _ someone. “You’ve got powers and you're a bad guy!”

“Remus,” Dee calls from where he’s standing, with his wings arched up, so powerful, so dangerous, fucking beautiful, from where he’s using those wings to protect the one brave woman and the would-be robber. His tone is questioning, a version of vibrations that Remus has heard in a bazillion futures that never happened. Remus knows what he’s asking about without him needing to say it.

“Two minutes,” Remus offers, scarcely definable, scarcely English. And yet Dee just nods to acknowledge that Remus had been heard, that Remus had helped him, that Remus had done a good job.

_ ("I don't need you.") _

“You’re a super villain!” The kid continues on, looking determined under his stupid dimestore mask.

“I do hope you’ll forgive me, Dear,” Dee says to Remus again, although he hasn’t looked away from the teacup-size nuisance that nearly flambeed him a moment ago, “I’m about to add assault on a minor to our long,  _ wonderful  _ list of crimes.”

Remus laughs. Because this is all weird and wrong and it's  _ funny.  _ Genuinely.

Or maybe he’s just finally lost it. 

The child yells something, forming a glowing orange fireball in his fist, like this is some sort of bad anime where the heroes win. Dee doesn’t even humor him. The fight is over in seconds as the gorgeous green wings fly forward and send the winds of a hurricane directly at him.

Remus sees it in snapshots: The winds picking up the kid, the jewelry store worker diving out of the way, the glass shards from those doors swooping into the air, and that kid slamming backwards twenty feet or so, folding over one of the untouched jewelry cases with a cry of pain. 

“Some free advice,” Dee says, because he’s a bastard, and Remus is definitely in love with him, “Don’t get back up.” 

The next thing Remus knows is Dee is right next to him wearing the face of the waitress from that morning, helping him to his feet, taking most of his weight when Remus knees refuse to work. He’s soft, warm, gentle, familiar. The soot from the close calls is gone, leaving only a torn shirt and exposed skin.

He grabs their fallen, forgotten, abused bags from their shopping earlier, and leads them away from the mess, the chaos, the wrongness with one minute and five seconds to spare before the police show up on scene. Remus doesn’t really remember much after that. Somehow they make it through the questioning-- Remus suspects that Dee puts their waitress’s large chest to use-- somehow they make it back to their car. Somehow.

Dee leans him against the door as he struggles to find the keys somewhere between their various pockets. “Keep breathing, Re,” He says softly, but no less meaningfully, “We’re almost out.”

Remus blinks and blinks again and his entire stomach makes a lunge for his throat. He doubles over and hits the asphalt of the parking lot like there are cinder blocks tied around his neck. Everything from that morning comes back up: the eggs, the pancakes, the blood on the gravel--

Remus coughs on his inhale, gags on the effort to remain upright while his mouth tastes like the inside of his stomach.

Dee presses a hand between his shoulder blades that’s grounding and painful and exactly what Remus needs all at once. He shudders, shakes, and falls apart. And Dee just maneuvers him into the passenger seat before crawling over him to get to the drivers side.

“I’m sorry,” Dee says, as he starts the ignition and pulls through the parking spot to get out of this lot, to get away from this mall, to get as far as possible from this location. “You-- You tried to tell me something was wrong and I didn’t--I wasn’t-- Remus--”

Remus hugs his knees to his chest. “F-fuck!”

Dee frantically scours their cup holders and finally offers him the remains of blue slushie from yesterday. And Remus is grateful enough that he takes it, swishes it in his mouth, and spits it out the window for the person driving behind them to deal with. 

“Fuck,” Remus says again because the back of his eye lids are still burned with the sight of scorch marks on the floor.

“Fuck,” Dee agrees, and presses the gas pedal to the floor. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

Remus is twenty one years old. Everything feels wrong in him, around him, about him in ways he can’t explain yet. 

He does not know that things are only going to get worse.


	4. Don't Forget to Call Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus should hang up. 
> 
> Remus needs to hang up. 
> 
> He laughs, like he’s on death row, like the barrel of a gun in on his temple, like his foot just left the ledge.
> 
> “What?” He asks, “Can’t a mother recognize the sound of her own son's voice?”  
> ***  
> aka Remus calls home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: attempted suicide (multiple times) in more detail than the previous chapters which is why I'm saying it, bad parenting, and misunderstanding on how medication works.

By the time he’s twenty one and four months, Remus is no stranger to cross country traveling. He’s been all over the country, all over the back roads, the main roads, the highways and the interstates. He’s had paper maps from greasy gas stations stuffed in his go-bag since he was eighteen, and keeps souvenirs of his travels in the form of pins and buttons he’s clipped on the shoulder strap. 

He had made it a habit to never travel with a plan. He had chosen directions on a whim, following signs when he felt the need to sleep somewhere, and picked up cars from dealerships when he had been too lazy to use his casino-breaking powers to get the cash to pay for it legally. 

Travelling is something Remus has always been familiar with. The freeing feeling of pressing his foot to the floor and blowing through endless cornfields, of burning more gas than strictly necessary, of getting himself lost on backroads without cell service-- He loves driving with the windows down and the long distances. During the billions of times that he had slept in whatever car he was using, he had enjoyed climbing on the hood and staring up at the stars until sleep dragged him away again. 

Travelling with Dee, however, is something else entirely.

At first it had been different just because there were two of them: the presence of another person made him feel the need to talk to fill the silence, made him actually have to answer the “where are we going” question, made him unsure of if what he was doing was the right thing to do.

(Not the morally right thing-- no that he knew the answer of. He meant the right thing as in the thing that Dee wanted him to do. He imagined in those first few weeks he acted a lot like a pet dog, always checking back to Dee to see that he was doing  _ good,  _ and wagging his metaphorical tail whenever the Shapeshifter gave him that delicious validation.)

Travelling with Dee almost means the death of sleeping in the car they were using. The Shapeshifter believes him when he says that they aren’t gonna be attacked in the night or the police aren’t going to come knocking on their windows, but Dee, as much as he tries to pretend he’s new to riches and money, is a fucking elitist. 

“Why sleep in the backseat when there is a hotel with a bed and breakfast right there?” He used to ask, sometimes still asks, never needs to ask anymore. “Why act like a ruffian without a home when I can live like a  _ king _ ?”

And, well, Remus had looked into his eyes for too long and gotten lost in the depths of them. Dee was pretty, you see? And Remus’s stubbornness was a learned trick that Dee knew how to circumnavigate. 

Travelling with Dee means hotels with beds and fake names in a log book. It means showers with mini bottles of shampoo and crisp covers freshly cleaned and watching the stars from the balconies while Dee smelled his money (again). It means complimentary breakfasts that aren’t super great, but they’re something that Remus hadn’t had in a while and sharing a room with another person who didn’t trust him not to run off with all their money, counting the near silent inhales and exhales, and trying not to think about stupid things like “family vacations” or  _ “Just share the bed, Roman, its one night!” _

It means no more stealing cars, because Dee rations out and puts aside money in the most atrocious order-- something that he won’t describe to Remus beyond “you’re cute, but not that cute” no matter how many times Remus asks, or  _ when  _ he asks. Somehow he always has the money for a new car and food and a hotel room and anything else they saw and wanted for whatever reason. 

_ (“Not that one,”  _ Remus had said, grabbing Dee’s arm before he could even look in the direction of the car in the lot. And Dee blinked but didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t pick out any other silver sedans and Remus managed to make it all the way to the bathroom before vomiting his guts up. Funny, isn’t it? That he can still see blood on a bumper and hear the screams of ambulance sirens thirteen  _ fucking  _ years later?)

Some things are the same, though.

Remus takes note of them as he drives calmly through the evening, like he used to in the four years where he had between running away from everything he’d known and running into Dee’s arms. The air still feels nice with the windows down, his eyes still burn when the opposite traffic forgets to turn off their high beams, the radio is still soft and soothing and plays along to his heartbeat. Dee’s still curled up in the passenger side seat, wearing a fresh pastel peach button up tucked into black dress pants and dress shoes bought straight from the rack. 

He’s still cute like this, vulnerable, with scales on display and his seatbelt imprinting a line on his opposite cheek. There’s a duffel bag of stolen money at his feet, all counted and tagged in his pocket notebook that he never lets Remus flip through. In the backseat are two more duffel bags with just Remus’s atrocious half of the money and another couple of suitcases that contain their material possessions.

Something stirs in Remus’s gut at the sound of Dee’s soft snores. He really is asleep, really does trust Remus not to drive them into a guard rail or off a cliff or into another car. He really trusts that Remus hasn’t been hiding a switchblade in his sleeve, just waiting for the right moment to plunge it into Dee’s throat before making an abstract art masterpiece out of his blood. He really trusts Remus not to park somewhere on the shoulder and take all the money they have between them and disappear in the night without a trace.

He  _ trusts  _ Remus.

And he doesn’t have a clue how much that means. 

Well, maybe he’s guessed a little. After all, Remus still gets that surprised look on his face when Dee actually listens to him, still finds himself rolling that purple coin from the Basilisk Casino that he’s kept, still gets a little shaky when he tells certain futures because  _ this is it, this is gonna be the time where Dee says he’s stupid and crazy and dumb and he’s not gonna listen-- _

Trust was a hard thing to come by after Remus turned eight. How can you trust the crybaby that starts sobbing every time someone gets a little scratch? How can you trust the psycho kid who needs medication to go to school? How can you trust Roman’s Weirdo Brother when he says he can see the future like some sideshow circus attraction?

But Dee trusts him enough to keep travelling with him, enough to keep robbing banks with him, enough to let down his glamour and show his real self while he’s sleeping.

It's all well and good and fine.

Remus wishes he trusted himself the way Dee trusts him.

The music playing is still something that Dee had picked out hours before, classical and Remus doesn’t hate it necessarily, but he did turn it down so slow that the engine is louder than those stupid violins. Remus has an appreciation for people who find the screeching strings pleasant rather than just annoying, he swears. But the rumbling of the engine, the bump of every uneven bit of road, the slow winding turns is a familiar comforting melody.

Home, Remus knows, is more of the road than any building he’s ever been in. It’s more of the feeling of Dee’s hand in his over the console, more of the smell of pine tree air fresheners mixed with new car, than any concrete solid place he’s ever been.

Which is silly, maybe. Remus thinks if he squeezes his eyes closed really hard he can still picture the layout of the house he and Roman lived in. (Not “home”, not “the place he grew up in” and he definitely didn’t grow up in there-- because it wasn’t until he was seventeen and sleeping in gas station bathrooms in two hour spurts that he learned how the world really was.)

His mother really tried, Remus thinks. She really tried to be a good person, a good mother, a good role model. She made sure they cleaned their rooms and taught them how to do the laundry. She made sure he brushed his teeth and was fed and healthy and smil--

Listen when he--

Helped him take his med--

She  _ tried _ , okay. Remus thinks that if he had been a normal child he might have grown up  _ happy _ . He thinks that if she had had any other son to twin with Roman she would have been a  _ fantastic  _ Mom. He thinks that if he hadn’t gotten his power at eight  _ fucking  _ years old he would have been able to articulate what the fuck was going on and they might have had a chance.

Then he wonders what the hell they would have had “a chance” at. 

And then he gets angry about himself even thinking about it and---

\--- _ drives his car directly into the guardrail. Killing himself instantly with the force of the side collision and the air bad while Dee gasps for life he desperately was clinging too and the car that had been behind them for three exits screeches to a stop a dozen yards ahead of them and with passengers scrambling from their pickup truck screaming for help _ \---

_ \---drives his car directly into the guardrail. Killing himself instantly with the force of the side collision and the air bad while Dee gasps for life he desperately was clinging too and the car that had been behind them for three exits screeches to a stop a dozen yards ahead of them and with passengers scrambling from their pickup truck screaming for help--- _

_ \---drives his car  _ **_directly----_ **

And Remus keeps driving on the quiet road, switching lanes so he’s in the middle lane rather than the side one.

Its not a good night.

Well in all honestly it hasn’t been a good day either. They had spent most of it driving and Remus hadn’t meant to be quiet, but his thoughts had been so loud he forgot that not everyone could hear them. They felt like screams, like a blow horn directly into his ear drums, like his brain was being torn apart with each and every fire of a neuron. 

Thinking hurt. He hated to do it. 

Dee must have picked up on it, must have taken note of his change in attitude since that morning when he had grabbed the car keys off the dresser and hoisted their bags into the car. He had asked once, Remus thought, maybe. It would have been out of character for him  _ not  _ to ask what Remus was doing with the keys, but if he had asked he had only done it one time.

And Remus hadn’t answered it and Dee hadn’t asked again.

He also hadn’t asked where they were going. Remus thinks that was blessing, a mercy, a silent kindness that he was too selfish to even say thank you for. He didn’t know where he was driving to, just that he had blown through a full tank and a half and somewhere over ten hours of driving  _ and  _ that they had crossed timezones again.

And the concept of timezones had made him angry enough to slam his foot to the floor and nearly run a blue minivan off the road entirely.

He switches hands he’s steering with, flexing and stretching his digits to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

There’s four hours now. 

And Remus knows this because even if he hadn’t graduated highschool he knew how to read a clock. Which was what he had been doing all day: watching the speedometer and watching the clock and watching his blood pressure rise with every mile he drove.

There’s four hours between them now. Which means nine o’clock for him, which means the dim sky, which means the peaks of the faint stars through the grey cloudy sky, the closed mom-and-pop shops and the dwindling number of other cars-- which means that everything around him currently is not the same thing for someone who is four hours behind them.

Dee is asleep, shifting tiredly, when Remus, grinds his teeth together so hard and violently and angrily.

His skin feels wrong, too tight, too small. It feels like someone else and he’s only borrowing it. It twists around his lungs, constricting around him like a python and stealing every breath from his chest and getting smaller with every inhale. 

His legs burn with a restless energy and his eyes hurt from driving for so long and he’s  _ hungry _ .

The radio fuzzes as he drives, as they reach the end of the station's signal range, as the violins finally die and leaves them with just static. The noise is grating in a way that Remus can’t quite place, something more annoying than the screeching of his own thoughts that won’t shut up. He reaches blindly for the power button, trying not to take his eyes off the road because he doesn’t want to plow them into the back end of the SUV they’ve been trailing behind for the better part of fifty miles. 

The radio goes off. 

Remus’s thoughts do not. 

The cloudy sky makes it darker than it actually is, making him turn on his headlights and make him growl at the lane reflectors he comes across every so often. The words on the signs might as well be written in Greek because Remus doesn’t bother reading them at all.

Mostly.

He tries not to. 

But there’s one that spells out “RESTSTOP” and it gouges its phantom fingers in Remus’s brain, refusing to leave him alone after he sees it. He drives and he tells himself it's because they haven’t eaten all day, because Dee probably needs to use the restroom, because he needs a stretch. Dee hasn’t complained at all, you know? Remus owes him a little bit of a stop. Maybe they can look for a fancy hotel with a penthouse edition and get himself drunk on the minibar delights.

That’s all.

It hasn’t nothing to do with the four hour time gap.

Dee doesn’t wake even when he pulls into a well lit parking spot. There’s a handful of other vehicles in the lot: a deep green hatchback with two bikes strapped to the top, a jeep with no doors and a lot of mud, a group of sixish motorcycles and the owners of them standing nearby talking quietly. He counts at least seven eighteen wheelers resting for the hour all with a collection of name brands and graffiti on the backs. 

Remus puts their own car in park and sits back, taking it all in. 

He’s no stranger to travelling, hasn’t been for a long time. At twenty one years and four months old he’s no longer scared of the dark and certainly not scared of going to a public restroom. The signs clearly mark eating areas, restrooms, the dark, creepy, not-at-all well lit path into the woods for those who need to stretch and want to be murdered by psycho crazy forest clowns. There’s vending machines that take credit cards for sodas and packaged foods and Remus even spots one selling cheap portable phone chargers.

There’s a payphone booth.

Three actually.

None of them are in use, currently.

Remus looks back at the clock in their car-- its a quarter past nine-- and wishes that he couldn’t do math so well in his head. Maybe if he hadn’t been able to count he would have been able to take the stupid urge by is scrawny neck and throw it out the window while he drove right on by. Maybe if he hadn’t been able to keep track of days so well he would have been able to ignore the date. Maybe if he hadn’t been so great at counting he could have been better at something else, anything else, something  _ normal _ .

She had  _ tried _ , hadn’t she? 

So Remus should have been thankful, grateful, happy at least about that, right? It was his fault that he hadn’t been able to figure out that his visions were telling the future until a year later, until the doctors told him it was all in his head, until his own mother had decided he was making it up. She had listened to him those first few times, listened and reassured him, and held him close when he couldn’t breathe from the crippling fear that Roman was going to  _ die.  _ She had weathered each of eight-year-old Remus’s breakdowns with the patience of a saint.

And he still hadn’t been able to be that perfect son for her.

_ “Take your meds, Remus,”  _ She had still told him when he was sixteen and had stopped crying when he watched her cross the parking lot without looking.  _ “Take your meds and you’ll get better.”  _ She had said even though that wasn’t what the meds  _ did  _ for people who actually took them. The meds hadn’t been the glue to piece him-- or anyone-- back together. They just reminded people of how their pieces fit without scratching and breaking and shattering even more.

And Remus hadn’t even needed them back then, because his problem hadn’t been like anyone else's. 

It hadn’t been delusions and hallucinations in his head. It hadn’t been him going crazy, it hadn’t been him losing himself. 

She had tried though. To be a good mother. To love him and all his….quirks.

_ “I don’t need you!”  _ Roman had said. Very loudly, very openly, very angrily. And Remus thinks about that day a lot, often,  _ all the goddamn time.  _ Because they had been arguing all the way up the stairs, had been fighting verbally and their mother, their mom, Mom, had been just below them in the kitchen making dinner-- or maybe it had been a dessert, baking? Or just messing around in the kitchen. She had been there.

And they had gotten in trouble for arguing much quieter before.

Remus thinks about that day. He thinks about the vision of Roman dying by his own hand, of the blood and the gore and then fluttering pulse and the concept of a soul leaving the body. He thinks about how his parents would have come running the moment they heard Roman scream in pain.

He thinks. 

Maybe he thinks too much. 

And maybe one day he’d get the courage to ask himself the big looming question: Had she loved him? Or had she loved the concept of him?

Today wasn’t, hasn’t been,  _ isn’t  _ that day.

It’s nine thirty, here, at this rest stop somewhere in Oregon, where Remus is clawing his fingers on his thighs and letting his unevenly chewed nails catch on the holes in his fishnets. Its nine thirty here on the day where Remus is twenty one and four months old and staring at a payphone like it was about to ring all by itself. Its nine thirty one and Remus is thinking too much, too loudly, not enough.

It must be around five thirty for her. Right in the middle of dinner. Or after. Maybe she’s doing the dishes under scalding water that boils her hands right off. Maybe the dinner was poisoned and she’s clawing at her throat right now. Maybe she went out for the evening and got hit by a car when crossing the street.

Remus knows he could check. He doesn’t.

Because his skin is already itching and his breath is too hot and he wants to cry but he’s too old to be crying over things like this, just like his mom has said a thousand times over. 

He wonders if she would believe him if he told her how many times she had cried over Roman, how many times she had frozen at the sight of her precious baby boy going still and silent, how many times she fell to the ground and clutched at his body screaming her sobs like there was a chance any god out there would hear her anguish and give her son back. 

Like she had only one to love and cherish.

She had tried.

Remus wants to laugh so badly it hurts. The urge itself rips through his body, shredding his organs with a razorblade and filling his lungs with fluids followed and squirming its way up his throat inch by inch with a determination Remus hasn’t seen in himself since that gas station four years ago where he saw himself jump in front of an eighteen wheeler and felt his insides go  _ splat!  _ for the first time.

Remus wants to laugh, because she had tried, and it hadn’t been enough and Remus still---

He still---

Remus pulls the keys out of the ignition and throws them in the cupholder next to the sleeping Dee. He exchanges it for his wallet, which had seen far better days and been handled far nicer, but that’s beside the point. His driver’s license is overdue but nothing short of a nuclear bomb will get him back to the state he had once lived in-- he skips over it and the various rechargeable cards he had picked up over the years (Starbucks, Seven-Eleven, a Techron Advantage Card he got for fun and never actually used because Dee always paid for gas) and goes straight for the cash.

They’re all large bills. He takes a fifty.

Dee murmurs softly as he unbuckles his seat belt and flies into a wide blown panic when Remus opens the door. Quicker than Remus thought was possible for a guy to move, he springs over the dividing console and grabs Remus’s arm with-- OW FUCK DEE -- claws.

Remus yanks back on instinct, throwing himself against the already open door and tumbles into the empty parking spot next to them. His  _ arm  _ howls with pain, with an agony, with a cacophony that drowns out all his other thoughts for the moment. 

The blood is  _ red.  _

Remus is twenty one and four months old and his body wracks with such a vehement  _ hatred  _ for the color it makes the rest of his blood, the blood in his veins, the blood in his body, his blood boil. Its red, and he hates red, has hated red, will forever hate red.

Because red was the color of Roman’s favorite jacket when they were eight, the color of Roman’s shoes that he left out on the stairs too many times, the color of Roman’s blood too.

Red had been the color staining the bumper of a silver sedan, the color of a broken snow globe hitting the carpet, the color of Remus’s insides on the freeway, and the underside of an eighteen wheeler, and the bottom of the motel bathroom tub. 

“Remus!” Dee yells from inside the car, morphing, changing, panicking in a way that is not like him at all. He clambers into the driver's seat looking too pale for a guy whose skin tone could be any color he wanted it to be. “I’m sor-- I didn’t know we ha--- Oh my god I’m sorry!” 

He grabs all the napkins they have squirreled away in the crevices of the car, then the half empty tissue pack from the last time Remus had decided to check to see if the line in McDonalds was going to be long, then a scarf Dee had bought before he remembered that it was warm enough to cook eggs on the sidewalk in most of the places they went to. He spills out of the car even less gracefully than Remus had, bubbling up apologies like his mouth was a fountain. There’s an emotion wafting off him, something that taints the air and makes the hair on Remus’s neck stand on edge.

“It’s okay,” Remus whispers.

“You’re not okay!” Dee frantically responds, turning a stripe of his hair blonde and completely missing the part where Remus did not say he himself was okay.

Dee’s fingers feel like bugbites up and down his arm, like cigarette ends being jammed into his flesh, like he was the cake and Dee was placing enough candles in him to make up for every birthday his mother had missed celebrating.

“Its okay,” Remus says, tugging his arm away before Dee can turn him into a house fire that burns down the whole block.

“Remus--”

Remus stands up. “I need to make a phone call.”

Remus doesn’t need to make a phone call. He probably  _ shouldn’t  _ make a phone call. 

“Remus!” Dee says standing up too. He’s taller this week, today, now, than he’s been before. He’s got an inch on Remus, and he uses that inch to look down at him and breathe like every inhale might be his last. There’s blood on his hands from trying to mop up where Dee had clawed him. Remus can feel the warmth of his blood trailing down his fingers even now. 

“What the hell is up with you right now!” He demands in a way that makes Remus’s stomach churn, that makes his knees weak and his throat feel all lumpy in all the wrong places. 

He should be  _ mad _ . Dee should be furious at him for ignoring him all day, for driving them through a handful of states, for not pausing for bathroom breaks or any type of food, for not waking him when he stopped at the rest stop. He should be so angry he can’t see straight, so enraged that he stood up and grabbed the keys and drive the fuck away from here. He should be  _ mad. _

So why does he sound so  _ scared?  _

“Is this about the Mall?” Dee asks, “I can do better, Remus, please! I’m sorry!”

He’s babbling like a brook, about things in the mall that Remus barely remembered because it was a day and a half ago and three, four, five states gone. He’s talking about the Mall the same way that eight-year-old Roman had been apologizing for name calling, while Remus was three sheets in the wind during a  _ tornado  _ on his own thoughts.

“No,” Remus says, which is about as effective as shoving his finger in a hole in a dam.

The parking lot lights make Dee look like he’s standing in a spotlight on stage. Remus hates the sight, hates the feeling that they’re putting on a production for someone else's entertainment, hates that he should know his lines by now and because he doesn’t he's ruining everything around him.

Dee moves like a clockwork mannequin with rusted gears. Remus thinks he can hear each individual gear screech as his back straightens and his weight shifts back and Dee looks more like Roman than he’d ever know.

“N--n--” Dee repeats, “No?”

As if he didn’t know what the word meant.

“Like….no I can’t do better?”

\-- _ “Like, No Get Back in the Fucking Car, Dee!” Remus explodes.--- _

_ \--“Like No, Leave me alone for five seconds!” Remus erupts.--- _

_ \--”Like No, Its not your fault I’m a  _ **_fucking_ ** _ mess!” Remus chokes.--- _

_ \--- “Like No, Its not your fault. I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me.”-- _

_ \--  _ “ _ Like No, I’m making bad decisions and I’m sorry and I don’t know what to do and I know that you don’t really love me the way you think you do because no one ever loves me that way. Like No, this is a future that I’m not going to choose but I wish I had because keeping this all in my chest  _ **_hurts_ ** _ like a little bitch, Dee. It hurts so bad. Like no. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m going to have such a nose bleed from this one, and because you’re you, you’ll know that I’ve been bullshitting my way through this for a good while. My power’s broken, Dee. Don’t you see? And once I tell you what's going to be left for you to stay?.”--- _

“Like No,” Remus says, defeated. “I don’t even remember what happened at the Mall.”

Dee stares at him with stolen sapphire eyes, with an emotion he can’t place, with wordless questions Remus doesn’t want to answer.

He doesn’t know what time it is.

A drip of his blood leaks down his lip and lands on the asphalt at his feet. That’s okay.

He breathes in the dry air, feeling it scratch down his throat and butcher his lungs with each inhale. “I...need to make this phone call.”

“Why?” Dee  _ pleads,  _ and Remus thinks that if even Dee can tell it will end badly, he should know better than to go through with it. 

But Remus has been thinking too much lately, about too many things. He’s been trapped up in his own head, and the last people he tried to let help him gave up on him.

And he still can’t give up on them.

“It’s her birthday,” Remus says with a smile that borders on deranged, “And she  _ tried,  _ you know?”

He doesn’t know. Remus can tell by the look on Dee’s face. But that’s okay. They made a pact after all, after that first night, that they wouldn’t get personal, that discussions of feelings were off the table. And Dee had said in a future that hadn’t happened that Remus was an investment that will pay out one day. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know.

“Remus,” Dee says, controlling the stage like he was born to do it. “What will she say?”

Remus shrugs and turns away because he’s never been able to make it past intermission of any production he’s watched. The fifty in his hand has splatterings of blood, his arm aches and whines as he uses it to smear away the waterfall from his nose. At least a couple of the sidewalk lights are broken so he doesn’t scare every single normal person chilling at the rest stop as he walks up.

Remus is twenty one and four months, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t waste forty seven dollars on snacks from a vending machine just to get the change in quarters to call cross country. He’s not hungry but he peels open a Cliff bar and takes a bite anyway. The rest of the food he leaves on the patio floor around the vending machine for whatever comes by, be it the kids he can hear yelling or the raccoons watching from the tree line.

He glances back at the car, their car, Dee’s car. Just to make sure its still there. That Dee didn’t drive off without him.

Dee hadn’t, didn’t, doesn’t. He’s sitting in the driver's seat with the door wide open, half in half out, and it looks like he was fiddling with the radio again.

Remus tosses the other half of the bar into the trashcan and walks the last three steps to the payphones. 

She had  _ tried _ . Remus puts the phone to his ear and tries to remember how to breathe. 

The buttons are stiff. Remus’s knuckle leaves behind traces of his blood as he dials. The back of his throat tastes like his inside of his stomach. There’s a gritty feeling along his teeth and the bottom of his mouth from the Cliff Bar. He’s knees tremble to the sound of the ringing, leaving him swaying in the too-long silences, in the bated breaths, in the calm before the hurricane. 

_ “Hi! It's the Regis Family! We’re not available right now, but if you leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you!”  _

Remus’s mouth tastes like blood. He swallows it down, breathes through the rest of the message, the beep and another moment where his chest just aches with a billion words he doesn’t know how to say.

“H….hey.” His voice is raspy. Why is his voice so raspy? He clears his throat. “I, uh...I was calling to say, Happy Birthday. Hope it was a good one. That’s all. B--”

“ _ \--Hello _ ?”

Remus’s jaw clicks shut at the noise, the words, the  _ voice.  _ Because even four years later Remus knows it like the back of his hand, can still imagine it screaming his name in the store, of it laughing as she brushed through his curls, of it whispering softly that everything is fine,  _ everything is okay, I’m right here, Remus _ .

_ “Ha, Hi! Sorry about that, you caught us just as we were getting back to the house! Oh, this is embarrassing… Who is this? Our caller ID isn’t working…” _

She trails off.

Remus thinks he’s forgotten how to breathe.

She sounds out of breath, flushed and happy and excited in a way that he doesn’t remember her ever being before. His vision tunnels through memories, through scenes in his head where she’s smiled and laughed and giggled the way she’s doing right now. He’s coming up blank.

He grabs the wall to keep himself steady.

“ _ Hello?” _

“I’m here,” Remus croaks.

She’s different now. So is he. Everything is different and the world seems to stop at that mind blowing statement.

_ “.....I’m sorry,”  _ She says, _ “I really need to know who this is, now.” _

Remus should hang up. 

Remus needs to hang up. 

He laughs, like he’s on death row, like the barrel of a gun in on his temple, like his foot just left the ledge.

“What?” He asks, “Can’t a mother recognize the sound of her own son's voice?”

There’s a breath. A moment. A second. Remus feels it. Like it's tangible, palpable,  _ real _ . Like all the clocks in the world decided to stop. Like a tick without a tock. Like the past and the present and the future didn’t exist at all. There’s a breath, and Remus thinks that she had tried once, maybe she could try again. 

They both could try again.

_ “Oh my god. Is that...Baby, is that really you? I’m so sorry for what I said. You were right.”  _

“Wait--”

_ “You’re  _ always  _ right. And I’m sorry about-- about everything. Please let me make it up to you?”  _ His mother says and Remus gets a sinking feeling in his chest.

“What--”

_ “Or at least talk about it? Can we do that?”  _ His mother says and Remus should have hung up.

“Mom--”

_ “Can you come back home, Roman?”  _ His mother says and Remus sees  **red** .

Because,  _ of course,  _ she thought he was Roman.  _ Of course.  _

Red is the color of Roman. The color of his jacket and his shoes and the ball Remus should have thrown into the road when they were eight. The color of a past Remus can’t get rid of because every time he does anything he can only hear Roman’s voice in his head or picture his mom with her red lipstick telling him to take his pills and stop being so abnormal. It’s the color of a future that he can’t reach because every time he gets a little bit of hope he’s reminded that he’s unnecessary and forgettable. 

Red is the color of Remus’s blood that looks just like his twin’s but somehow has always been valued less to their mother.

He squeezes the handle of the phone so hard his fingers go numb from the pain, and the scarf around his wrist turns scarlet. His body trembles and bubbles and boils like its housing a volcano ready to erupt, or a thousand termites are trying to chew their way out of him, or every atom in his body is trying to shake themselves apart.

Remus is twenty one and four months old and he hangs up the phone so hard that it pops right back out of the slot and swings to the ground by its cord.

He doesn’t fix it. In fact he doesn’t even see it because he’s too busy seeing red. Too busy seeing Roman’s head collide with the bumper of a silver sedan, too busy seeing Roman’s neck break when he falls off the swingset wrong, too busy seeing Roman’s body on the ground of his carpet surrounded by the shattered remains of a snowglobe, too busy seeing all the things he should have done or let happen or  _ helped  _ happen.

Too busy knowing that hindsight is 2020 and Remus’s insides suddenly want to be outsides and his arm hurts and he wants to-- 

He wants to--

\-- _ “REMUS!” Dee shrieks from across the parking lot, sprinting towards him because he forgot that he can shapeshift into something faster. There’s a terror in his eyes, a fear, a horror in his expression that's like being stuck under a collapsed building and knowing that no one is gonna come. “REMUS! SOMEONE HELP!”--- _

\-- _ “REMUS!” Dee shrieks from across the parking lot, sprinting towards him because he forgot that he can shapeshift into something faster. There’s a terror in his eyes, a fear, a horror in his expression that's like being stuck under a collapsed building and knowing that no one is gonna come. “REMUS! SOMEONE HELP!” _

_ But no one is close enough and Remus’s knots are a practiced stubborn thing that has his body convulsing before Dee remembers he can make claws and cut the scarf off.--- _

\-- _ “REMUS!” Dee shrieks from across the parking lot, sprinting towards him because he forgot that he can shapeshift into something faster. There’s a terror in his eyes, a fear, a horror in his expression that's like being stuck under a collapsed building and knowing that no one is gonna come. “REMUS! SOMEONE HELP!” _

_ But no one is close enough and Remus’s knots are a practiced stubborn thing that has his body convulsing before Dee remembers he can make claws and cut the scarf off. _

_ But by then Remus is already dead.--- _

But no that’s not right. 

He  _ doesn’t  _ want to die. 

His mouth tastes like metal, and he’s so  _ sick  _ of the taste of metal, of the smell of blood, of the sight of red on his clothes and on him. He’s so sick of being the weird twin, of being the one everyone wants to forget, of being gifted with a power that's so shitty it his own body rejects it. He’s so,  _ so  _ sick.

And tired.

And  _ angry.  _

That he spent all day trying to figure out what to say to his mother and she doesn’t even remember him. That his family pushed him away and now he watches himself jump off buildings or into traffic or off tables at a rest stop. That his skin feels too small and his mind too big and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with him but everyone still treated him like there was.

“Pardon me,” A voice says to his left. “Hello? Sir? You seem to be bleeding...”

It belongs to a guy with glasses, big thick blocky glasses that match every other part of him: his sharp jawline, his stiff spine, his set shoulders. It belongs to a guy with hair so dark it might as well have been a black hole, with eyes swirling with so many blues they looked like nebulas, with skin so pale it might as well have been the surface of the moon. It belongs to a guy that reaches out oh so carefully and touches Remus’s shoulder to check that he’s alright and--

\-- _ “A stick in the mud?” Logan suggests sourly as they walk. The rain speckles his glasses and plasters his hair to his head. _

_ “I was gonna say prude, but that works too,” His younger brother shrugs, sipping loudly from his drink. “Girl, you really just need to loosen up. You’re always so stressed!” _

_ “I do not need to loosen up,” Logan counters, “In fact, if anything, I need to tighten up my interactions with people  _ more. _ You saw what happened to the baristas at the Starbucks.” _

_ “Yeah, and it was Awesome!” His brother motions to the drink in his hand, “Free drinks!” _

_ “Will it still be awesome when they get fired and lose their source of income because they unwittingly gave away merchandise to customers?” Logan asks. He tugs his jackets around him tighter, hunching his shoulders and wishing that between the two of them they had thought to bring at least one umbrella. _

_ His brother rolls his eyes because the rain doesn’t bother him anymore than the slight chill or the cars passing dangerously close to their sidewalk. “Honey,” He says, “Its two free drinks. It’s not gonna kill the infrastructure.” _

_ Logan grunts, dismissing the rest of the argument as he was prone to do more often these days. “Remind me again why we’re here.” _

_ “That prince dude is supposed to be around here today!” _

_ “You mean, Princeps,” Logan corrects. “Assumedly named after the swordsmen from Roman armies pre-Marian reforms. Which does not make any sense considering that he does not carry a sword and his perceived power does not--” _

_ “I wanna get his autograph!” _

_ Logan squints back at his brother. “You want the autograph of a man who is running around the country in tights? You don’t even have anything for him to sign.” _

_ His brother shakes his mostly empty drink and points to the spot right below where the barista had scratched out his own name, not that Logan can see it, or anything. “Duh.” _

_ Logan shakes his head, as his brother prattles on about Princeps face, his biceps, his thighs. And as much as Logan enjoys listening to his brother talk about things that interest him, he wishes that it was something other than men that thought “superhero” was a stable dayjob. He sighs and removes his glasses and to clean them as best as he can with the raindrops being the nice of dimes. _

_ He hates the rain, hates that he couldn’t ever see more than three feet when it so much as sprinkled, hates that his brother has no such problems at all and can continue walking without a care in the world. _

_ “LOGAN!” His brother yells. _

_ And Logan has just enough time to feel his stomach jump straight to his throat, before he walks blindly into an open manhole. His forehead slams on the outer rim so hard he sees actual stars in the corners of his blurry vision. And he fumbles and flails and falls and... _

_ And the empty air catches him, covets him, carries him off. Because he’s dead as soon as his head hits the concrete floor ten feet below--- _

Remus inhales like he’s been drowning for the past four years, and hasn’t been able to find the surface. He stumbles back from the stranger who had approached him, from the man who has a younger brother, who doesn’t like superheroes, who’s name is  _ Logan _ . He stumbles back and feels the whole Earth roll under his feet, turning the solid ground to an uneven puddy.

Logan jerks back as well, be it shock or surprise or something in between and equally bad. He looks at Remus, the way that the first dealer from the Basilisk Casino had, the way that the new freshmen at their high school had when the older kids told them to steer clear of the guy who looked just like the theater star, the way that Roman had when he had first seen the orange bottle of pills that were supposed to make Remus not cry all the time. 

“My apologies, you seemed to be in distre--” Logan starts.

“Don’t touch me,” Remus says quicker, louder, angrier. Because Logan doesn’t know that he’s going to die some day in the future, that its going to be a stupid sudden death, that his brother that he actually loves and whom loves him back is going to witness it. Because Remus doesn’t know why  _ he  _ knows either.

His skin blisters and bubbles and itches in a way that tells him he needs to take it off. His arm burns from the scratches, his blood is making his hand and wrist all sticky and his head feels a bit like cotton. His mouth tastes like Starbucks Hot chocolate and ash. 

“Don’t touch me,” Remus says again, because he feels radioactive and can smell petrichor in the air and everything about it is  _ wrong _ . If he says anything else he thinks he might throw up or cry or both and he doesn’t think anything other than more blood  _ can  _ come up.

Remus turns and runs. 

“Remus?” Dee asks, when Remus throws himself into the passenger seat the way he should have that morning.

Remus shakes his head. And keeps shaking it because if he stops his thoughts will catch up and then they’ll really be in trouble.

“Drive,” He manages between his inconsolable gulps for air.

“Where?” Dee asks.

“Don’t care.”

He doesn’t. He just needs to be somewhere other than here.

Remus is twenty one and four months and he’s no stranger to travelling without a destination. Dee buckles his seat belt and pulls out of the parking spot without another word. Remus brings his knees to his head and counts, and counts, and counts. If he closes his eyes he thinks that he might see the silhouette of Logan standing next to the payphones staring at his hand still so he doesn’t close his eyes.

_ “That’s just what I’m saying, John.”  _ The radio says,  _ “All these new people with what can only be classified as “superpowers” and what is the Police doing about this? Nothing!”  _

“Hotel,” Dee says, “We can order some food there and actually look at those marks on your arm.”

“Whatever,” Remus says.

_ “Well what do you expect the Police to do?”  _ The radio says, “ _ Their answer to everything is “shoot it.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the police shooting at a kid who just so happened to be able to make lightning. You heard about that incident in the Idahoan Mall didn't you? Times are changing. It's up to the people to police themselves now.” _

Dee sticks his tongue out ever so slightly, like a snake smelling the air.

_ “You’re encouraging the actions of people like that dragon guy from that incident? The child from that event is in the hospital right now.” _

_ “So is the man that had been robbing the store. Which is better than him being the morgue. I’m not saying that I think that putting children in the hospital is a good idea! I’m saying that only protecting the lives of “good” people is telling everyone to become judge, jury, and executioner. The Idaho Mall Incident could have been handled better-- in fact I think if the new guy, the one around the east wearing the white? You know the one I’m talking about, Karen.” _

_ “Yeah, yeah, the Prince? I think he called himself Prince.”  _

_ “Yes. If the Prince had been the one who had handled the Idaho Mall, it could have been handled completely peacefully, without either parties having ended up in the hospital.” _

Dee grips the steering wheel, tightly.

Remus reaches out and turns the radio off.


	5. Supposed To Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus wants to laugh. He cries instead.
> 
> “I’ve got you,” Dee says. “I’ve got you, darling.”  
> ****  
> aka Remus has a confrontation with the reason he keeps getting stuck and Dee is there to pick up the pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI! This chapter contains a repetitive graphic suicidal death sequence! Please read carefully and stay safe.

Its three AM and there’s something wrong.

Its three AM and he’s standing on the balcony of a hotel in a city he doesn’t remember the name of and he hasn’t slept in a day and a half. His head hurts, and his throat is dry, and he’s having a hard time keeping his hands from shaking.

The air smells, like smog and like grime and earth and rain, like something so familiar and worldly that he should be grounded in it and not just floating over everything. Any yet here he is, floating, drifting, hovering and haunting and utterly untouchable by anything.

The sky is heavy and hard and dark, grumbling and threatening with its load so much so that one couldn’t tell where one cloud started and another ended. It was reminiscent of the gritty asphalt of a highway, of black snow piled on the sides of the roads, of endless piles of ashes.

There’s something wrong.

With him.

Its the fourth floor, and the balcony framed by a blackmetal fence. A few doors down another guest has left a flag up for some sports team and it flaps in a breeze that one wouldn’t be able to feel on his arms. Actually he can’t feel his arms at all anymore. He can’t feel  _ anything _ , anymore.

Down below there’s nothing but a parking lot: concrete sidewalks and empty vehicles and a couple lamps that bring just enough light that phantom people don’t trip over the sidewalk on their drowsie attempts to get inside before the skies crack open again. Its quiet.

Too quiet, he thinks. Like the whole world was holding its breath. 

Its makes the sounds of sirens and broken glass and a car alarm screech in his head. His fingers curl around the railing, stiff and cold and white knuckled. He feels….mechanical, with his joints frozen solid and his breath so even he forgets its there. Like his body isn’t his own even though its the only one he’s ever known, and someone else is holding the controls. He’s  _ stuck. _

But he’s not really. He knows he’s not. At any point he can  _ make a choice _ . 

He just hasn’t yet. He’s holding his breath along with the world, with the sky, with the night and the shadows and the future.

And because he’s holding his breath, he’s stuck here, seeing, watching, feeling, thinking,  _ floating. _

_ \--He stays, and its as easy as breathing, as lonely as it is too. The air is cool, the rain starts in thirty minutes, chilling to the touch and turning his body to stone. There’s nothing to watch, but he does it anyway: stare into the emptiness around him and forget everything he’s ever been. Time drip, drip, drips away and the sky is still crying and Dee is too when he finds him for some reason.--- _

_ \--He stays, and its as hard as breathing, as lonely as it is too. The air is cool and the rain starts in thirty minutes but by that time he’s sitting on the railing with his legs between the rungs waiting for a whisper to knock him off. Time drip, drip, drips away, and the sky is still crying by the time Dee breaks down the door to his room in a frantic desperate frenzy-- _

_ \--He leaves, turns, heads back inside without a fuss. There’s a complimentary water bottle on the desk and the remains of Wendy’s frosty that he never finished thats an accurate representation of what his insides look like. It's funny going down his throat, like drinking warm swamp water and tasting each tadpole egg as it goes down his throat. It makes him want to laugh, makes him want to feel something, makes him so  _ tired  _ and he shuffles over to the Queen sized bed and face plants into the torn and shredded comforter. He doesn’t sleep, can’t sleep, won’t sleep and his headache makes him wish the comforter suffocated him.-- _

Its three am.

_ \--He leaves, turns, goes without even stopping to grab his room keycard. His head is sudsy, fuzzy, buzzy and the complementary lights make his eyes ache in a way beyond being physical. He trips over the fourth step on the staircase, and hits the seventh and ninth on the way d-- _

_ \--He leaves, turns, goes without even stopping to grab his room keycard. His head is sudsy, fuzzy, buzzy and the complementary lights make his eyes ache in a way beyond being physical. He avoids tripping on the fourth step on the staircase. The air feels like static, like his thoughts, like everything and anything and nothing at all. There’s no one outside, not at this hour, not in this section of the city when the sky is so finicky like this. There’s a 24hour diner, and he knows its there because he and Dee ate there earlier and the music was  _ shit  _ but it was louder than his thoughts right? _

_ “Uh,” The waiter says, when he shows up. “We have a no shoes-no shirt- no service policy?” Like its a question. And its funny in a way that makes everything around him feel like cotton. He didn’t even realize he wasn’t wearing shoes.-- _

_ \--He leaves, turns, goes without even stopping to grab his room keycard. His head is sudsy, fuzzy, buzzy and the complementary lights make his eyes ache in a way beyond being physical. He avoids tripping on the fourth step on the staircase. The air feels like static, like his thoughts, like everything and anything and nothing at all. He walks in a direction, any direction, this direction, that direction until he’s as lost as he feels and the sky cracks open and drowns him-- _

Its Three AM.

_ \--He goes, slowly, lethargically, but determined. He collects his things, his memories, his presence, and stuffs them back in his travel bag and zips it shut with more force than is necessary. Shoes, shirt, jacket, soap. His head is sudsy, fuzzy, buzzy and the complementary lights make his eyes ache in a way beyond being physical. He avoids tripping on the fourth step on the staircase. The air feels like static, like his thoughts, like everything and anything and nothing at all. He stops, stands, breathes like his lungs are on fire and he has so many regrets but nothing hurts more than when he thinks about how Dee is gonna  _ hate  _ him when he wakes up in a few hours and finds himself all alone again-- _

_ \--He goes, quickly, chaotically, but reluctantly. He collects his things, his mistakes, his presence, and stuffs them in his bag zipping it closed. Shoes, shirt, key card. His head is sudsy, fuzzy, buzzy and the complementary lights make his eyes ache in a way beyond being physical. He stops outside the door across the hall and he’s just enough of an asshole to unball his jacket and gently hook it over the door handle for Dee to find in the morning and  _ hate  _ him for. The air feels like static, and its buzzes under his skin breaking through the numbness as he walks to that stupid 24 hour bus station and disappears forev-- _

_ \--He goes, quickly, chaotically, but reluctantly. He collects his things, his mistakes, his presence, and stuffs them in his bag zipping it closed. Shoes, shirt, jacket, soap. His head is sudsy, fuzzy, buzzy and the complementary lights make his eyes ache in a way beyond being physical. He stops outside the door across the hall and before he knows what he’s doing his knuckles are rapping on the wood so hard, so loudly, so desperately that he can feel the shockwaves all the way to his elbow.  _

_ Dee opens the door, looking disgruntled and like he just woke up (he did, he has, he will) but not upset and really thats all he needs to see isn’t it? He doesn’t really think because the second that the door is open far enough, he’s launching himself into Dee’s arms and they both stumble backwards into the room. Dee should tell him to get lost because its too early to be anything other than insane but he  _ doesn’t  _ and then his lips are colliding with any part of Dee he can get to and-- _

ITS THREE AM.

_ \--He throws his head back and scREAMS. As loudly as he can, as long as he can, as much as he can until he can’t breathe, until the silence of the morning shatters like the glass facade it is, until the echoes of his voice are ringing in his ears and he can’t possibly hope to hear anything else. Until the lights of the surrounding buildings flicker on and the other visitors are frantically looking out to find the source and the banging on his door matches timing with the pounding in his own brain. He screams until he can’t anymore because he’s too busy laughing.-- _

_ \--The TV is on and then its not because his fist is going through the screen in a mess of blood and knuckles and laughter-- _

_ \--His bag is in his hands and then its not because he’s throwing it over the railing to see if it sets off the car alarms when it smashes the windshield of the car on the street.-- _

_ \--He’s on the railing, balancing like a tightrope walker and then he’s not because he bent his knees and jum-- _

Its strange, He thinks, watching his crumpled body dent the front of an SUV and feeling each shard of the windshield going through his spine and flesh and setting off all the fun dazzling alarms that can be set off. 

Its strange because this is not the first time he’s seen his life snuffed out. Its not even the hundredth time. Tonight alone he’s seen his body go into a freefall at least three hundred times.

Its strange, he thinks, its weird. Its _ three AM _ and there’s something wrong with him.

It takes a whole minute for the receptionist running the front desk to come running out of the building because she hadn’t been looking and the car alarm was the first thing that warned her anything was wrong. It takes thirty seconds for someone else to react to her screaming. Another minute for someone to open out their doors and come running to her aid. At three minutes, there’s a man standing over his body, yelling.

Then the vision cuts off because he can only see three minutes after his death and not a millisecond more. 

He’s stuck watching again and again.

A million possible futures, a billion different endings, a trillion things that could be tweaked ever-so-slightly that change the outcomes, and he can see them all. It doesn’t make sense-- shouldn’t if he thinks too much about it. Because time should be passing while he stands here watching his death, but instead the whole world halts while he flickers in and out of reality and he can’t-- won’t--  _ isn’t-- _

There’s no what ifs. There’s the facts: this will happen when he jumps, when he falls, when he dies, when he goes back to bed, when he runs away.

Something warm hits his hand, practically igniting his whole arm. Suddenly he snaps out of the loop, blinking three times and the world returns to him as the present moment. He blinks slowly looking down at his hand where the shadow of a dark liquid is splattered just below his index finger knuckle, rolling over the side of his hand, and pooling on the flat of the railing he was gripping. Laughter rumbles in his chest, crawling up his throat like a hundred beetles trying to find their ways out by any means possible. 

His legs buckle and his knees hit the concrete at the same time his giggles start exploding between his lips into the silent morning. He clings to the railing and presses his forehead into the slim bars, as his chest heaves for oxygen that doesn’t quite taste right. He gulps in so much he can’t imagine why he feels lightheaded, his mouth tastes like blood, and his palms itch where the cold metal is cutting to the flesh.

He’s twenty one, richer than he ever dreamed of being, and there is something wrong with him. 

Why is there something wrong with him?

Dee doesn’t have this problem. Dee changes into other people, animals, hybrids  _ all  _ the time; how come he doesn’t get stuck? Why doesn’t he wander around with a head full of golden curls and horns? Why don’t his legs morph into a fishtail without warning sometimes? Why doesn’t Dee wake up in a fit because he can't remember who he is or who he’s pretending to be?

Why is he the only one who can’t get a grip on himself as he floats in the air like the coming rain and then goes crashing to the street below again and  _ again  _ and  **_again_ ** _?  _

Why can’t--

Why--

Why is there always blood trailing down his face? Why does his head hurt so much and why does his mouth taste so bad? Why is he stuck staring at the congealed blobs on the concrete underneath him and why does he feel so numb about it? Why can’t he just--

_ \-- The windshield shatters underneath him, his head slams against the roof, so hard everything bends and breaks and his soul is forcibly ejected from his body and that alarm screeches into the sky and the girl at the front desk comes running out, screams, and then the guy is over him, yelling nonsense and climbing on the hood with him, reaching out, fingers pressing against his non existent pul-- _

Its so annoying. He knows it's annoying.  _ He’s  _ annoying.

His skin prickles and itches with phantom glass shards. And his eyes ache and burn in a way that makes them water and screw themselves closed. And his head pounds and drums to a rock concert that outplays the thunder overhead.

He’s stuck, on the fourth floor balcony, with his forehead pressed to the railing, with his mind floating in the nothingness, the everythingness, the possibilities and the emptiness. He’s lost, losing himself, free falling and smashing into the hood of the car  _ again _ .

And its three AM still, forever and never and he wants it to stop being three AM and wants to stop feeling his spine snap like a toothpick. 

But that means he has to  _ move  _ and  _ change things _ and  _ make a decision _ .

And he shouldn’t be scared of this, shouldn’t be worried, shouldn’t want to  _ cry  _ just because he needs to make a choice. Everyone makes choices, everyday, without even thinking about what they could be affecting. Who they could be affecting.

And most of the time those choices don’t mean anything at all. What kind of cereal do you want to eat? What music do you listen to? How many alarms do you sleep through? In the end it doesn’t  _ matter.  _ How can it?

Everyone  _ dies  _ after all.

\--  _ car alarm screeches into the air, stealing all the peace and quiet and the isolation from the night. The girl at the front desk comes running out, tripping over the curb when she sees exactly what landed on the hood of the car and her scream is so fucking funny he wants to laugh but he twisted a little in the air and now there’s glass shards cutting open his lungs and filling them with blood and his vision is all blurry, cutting out faster than before, but slower than that time he fell purposely head first and isn’t it weird how he calls it “falling” as if he didn’t bend at the knee and-- _

Everyone dies.

So why does he still  _ care _ so much? Why does it still hurt to think about Silver Sedans and why cant he glance at snow globes without remembering how easy they are to swing down on someone’s unsuspecting skull? Why does he still think about doctors and therapy and wonder why it hadn't worked before?

Everyone dies.

And yet he cant breathe when he thinks about casino cash boxes in the middle of crowds, about jewelry store doors being blown open, about children who think "super power" and "can do no wrong" are synonymous. He cant breathe when he thinks about all the meanings of the term "suddenly", about how quick and fast things can happen, about how differently things could have gone.

Did it make a difference? 

_ Was it the right one? _

Or was it supposed to be that Roman, for all his liveliness, for all his popularity, for all his basking in attention and the terrible life lessons he had taken upon himself to teach his brother-- was it supposed to be that Roman should have died 13 years ago to a reckless teenage driver in a silver sedan? That Dee should have died several endless months ago stealing a cash box he couldn't have kept? That one day soon a man named Logan will find his life suddenly stolen by a misstep on a rainy afternoon?

Was he supposed to be changing things? Or was he supposed to have merely watched, observed, accepted? 

What if there were choices and because he made the wrong ones, he is falling, falling,  _ falling,  _ **splat,** now?

Everyone dies.

\-- _ girl at the front desk comes running out, tripping over the curb when she sees exactly what landed on the hood of the car and her scream is so fucking funny he wants to laugh but he twisted a little in the air and now there’s glass shards cutting open his lungs and filling them with blood and his vision is all blurry-- _

Is this how he's supposed to go?

Its Three AM and time doesn’t move but somehow he finds himself lying on the balcony twisted up in knots and drooling blood from the back of his itchy, burning throat. He’s on the cement balcony; he’s on the hood of a car. His fingers are wrapped around the railing like he thought it could anchor him in the middle of a hurricane; His arm is twisted and broken up in seven different ways and there are shards of glass in his shoulder cutting off the nerves. Its raining soft and sweet and gentle; he’s crying because  _ this is not how he wants to go, please don’t make him go like this, he doesn’t want to leave-- _

He’s alive and breathing through undamaged lungs; He’s dead and Roman is twelve minutes older than him because his vision is black and the front desk girl is screaming  _ again _ .

The thunder rumbles. He feels it in the air when every molecule in Earth's atmosphere vibrates and in the ground when every raindrop splatters into nothingness. He can feel the rain pouring over his body, plastering his thin shirt to his heavy limbs, caressing his face to the point where he can't tell the difference between it and the from blood in his hair--

\-- _ twisted a little in the air and now there’s glass shards cutting open his lungs and filling them with blood and his vision is all blurry, cutting out faster-- _

He's on the ground splayed out like a massacre. A hot mess, except he's so cold and empty and everything hurts.

When was the last time he  _ slept?  _

His head  _ aches _ , his eyes feel so heavy, and there’s something twisting in his chest: something wriggling and heavy that’s not the glass tearing through his muscles, but just as real as it. He thinks it's  _ terror _ . But how can he be scared when this is what's  _ supposed to be happening?  _

Unless it's not. In that case he should be more than just a little scared. He should be frightened, horrified, aghast. His limbs shouldn’t feel like lead weights dragging him down because there should be adrenaline, right? He should be so desperate to change this fate that he launches himself--

\-- _ the guy is over him, yelling nonsense and climbing on the hood with him, reaching out, fingers pressing against his non existent pulse and he almost wants to curl into the touch but he’s dead and his vision is black and there’s nothing left-- _

_ \-- _ back into the hotel room, tripping over the sliding door base and stumbling his way into the carpet. He should be so full of nerves and that his hands are shaking, that he can’t imagine being alone, that he throws himself out the door and across the hall to the  _ safety  _ that is Dee’s always welcoming arms.

Because Dee is safe. And warm. And Dee’s….Dee’s…

They’ve been running around for months now, amassing a fortune larger than they can just carry around, enough to buy the moon from the sky if they wanted it, enough for them to not need to have two separate rooms at all. 

But if they share a room, he knows what will happen. What should happen. He knows the only reason Dee doesn’t know about everything, about his hatred of the color red, about why he won’t get near a silver sedan, about why he needed to make that phone call just to hear that his mother had completely forgotten him again-- the only reason why Dee doesn’t know is because he hasn’t asked yet.

Is it a mercy? Or a threat?

Can it be both?

Is it supposed to be both? 

He can’t keep a secret. Not for the life -- _ cutting open his lungs and filling th--  _ the life of him. Not from Dee. Because he’s seen a billion deaths that could have happened, he’s seen a hundred different realities and drowned in all of them.

Because he’s tasted asphalt under the tires of cars on a highway, felt the wind caress him off the top of skyscrapers, fallen asleep in a bathtub of blood in a hotel room. Because he’d died so many times before he ever reached Twenty One and no one cared.

But suddenly Dee had shown up and he kisses like he knows time is limited here on this Earth, in a way that he’s never been able to convince  _ anyone  _ else. Not Roman who sang and danced to everyone else’s tune, not his mother who tried to fix him and then forgot him when that got too improbable, not his dad who stayed silent when he should have been anything else, not the kids at school, not his teachers, not his doctors.

Dee had shown up believing in him and that meant  _ something _ . He didn’t want it to mean nothing in the end. He didn’t want it to end.

Not like this.

Please, not like this. Please, please, please, please _ please _ **_please--_ **

“REMUS!”

Its not Three AM but Remus is staring at the pouring rain in the sky wondering what the  _ fucking hell just happened to him.  _

He’s  _ wet  _ and not in a fun way. His head  _ rings.  _ The air is lighter, the morning later, and his limbs are trembling from being outside in the middle of a fucking thunderstorm. His clothes stick to him like a second skin, and Remus does not like the implications of that at  _ all.  _

He blinks, once, twice, thrice, and his lungs struggle to gain anything worth keeping. Everything in him is screaming for his attention, making him writhe with the sudden influx of stimuli. His fingers and toes are freezing, his stomach is aching, his head pounds and his thoughts feel like the inside of his brain is coated with molasses or some shit that makes him so slow to register anything around him.

The touch is burning. Remus at once needs it like he needs oxygen and needs it gone because its boiling him alive from the inside out. He wants to scream, but the most he can get is a pathetic little whimper.

“Remus, what the  _ fuck, _ ” Dee says so unelquently that Remus is pretty sure he’s crying.

That makes two of them.

“I don’t--” Remus clings to Dee, because he’s  _ real  _ and solid, and Remus’s throat is coated in blood from a swan dive he didn’t take. “I don’t, I  _ don’t _ ,  **please--** ”

The balcony is slick with blood and rain, mixing so freely Remus has a hard time looking at it. Dee helps him move, slowly, because everything makes him dizzy. Water pours off pockets on his body, and drags the dredges of his insides over the edge and on to the car below. Remus flinches with each drop, each splash, each  _ splatter _ .

Remus wants to laugh. He cries instead.

“I’ve got you,” Dee says. “I’ve got you, darling.”

Remus almost wonders who he’s talking to.  _ Darling _ ?  _ Him _ ? Isn’t there someone else Dee should be calling that? Someone softer, someone kinder, someone who isn’t covered in their own blood and getting snot on his clean vest? Someone who doesn’t hold himself at a distance and play pretend that he’s okay like he’s still eight years old and hasn’t picked up that stupid red rubber ball yet?

“Remus,” Dee says, and it takes him a moment to focus on the way that Dee is in front of him, a hand gently cupping his chin and sending shivers all through his frantic body. They’re so close and Remus is sobbing and Dee is  _ still here.  _

_ “I don’t need you,”  _ Roman had said four years ago and then again every time Remus had closed his eyes since. Roman had been his tether, his anchor, his goal and his reason to do just about anything. Because that was what brothers were for, right? He had done everything he could to see his brother smile, to see Roman feel loved, to see Roman  _ live  _ unafraid of dying.

But when Remus was floating alone in the nothingness, the emptiness, the everythingness,  _ Dee  _ was the one who had shown up. Why was it that a stranger he met by chance at a casino wanted him there more than his own brother? Why was Remus covered in blood and crying and one swan dive from becoming an actual hot mess and Dee was still here, holding him, calling him  _ darling,  _ and speaking to him so softly? 

“ _ The one thing I want…is for us to stick together.”  _ Dee had said several hundred billion futures ago.

Dee is right there and Remus can see the stars in his eyes, those soft, worried blue grey eyes that are uniquely his right along with the tears trailing down his face. Dee is right there and his hair is swept to the side, utterly mused from its the slicked back look that Dee likes. Dee is  _ right there. _

_ And Remus’s lips are on his.  _

Remus feels like he’s back in that IHOP from forever ago, feels like he’s bending over a table and just put Dee’s hand in syrup for funsies, feels like the clueless waitress is about to run over to them and command that they stop. He feels like he never punched Dee in the face for having feelings, feels like there was never a kid in that mall, feels like he didn’t drive for ten hours just to get away from himself.

Dee kisses like he needs the control. Remus kisses like every second is going to be his last.

Because everyone dies at some point and Remus is not the kind of person people stick around with. Because at any moment he might lose  _ everything. B _ ecause the universe and the deities he doesn’t believe in are not nice. Because Remus, of all the people in the entire world, is aware of how short a second can be.

Dee pulls back with a pant, his pupils are blown wide, like a fucking cat. His fangs tease from between his lips, dripping with a smear of blood that’s probably Remus’s.

“I can’t tell if it's the blood loss or if you’re serious,” Dee says in that nauseating smart tone of his, “But can we put a pin in this?”

“Fuck you,” Remus says, because he can’t really think of anything else to say to him when he looks like that, when Remus’s chest hurts, when he’s so tired he thinks standing might kill him, when he’s so cold and Dee’s lips are a fire that he wants to ignite the rest of his body.

“Clothes off first,” Dee says somehow breathless and with more oxygen than Remus thinks he can ever get into his lungs. He can feel his fingers, twisting and pulling at the edge of Remus’s soaked shirt, dragging it up and over Remus’s head without any help from him at all.

Remus leans forward before the curve of the collar can stop him and chases after Dee’s warm lips.

“Rem--fuck,  _ fuck, Remus!”  _ Dee says again, and its the softest way anyone has ever said his name before. “Remus, we have to get you into dry clothes--” But then Dee is the one pushing his lips into Remus’s so what does it matter?

Water drips from Remus’s bangs into his eyes, and blood makes his mouth taste like metal and whatever the fuck it was that he ate last. Dee tugs at his shirt again and it finally comes off of him. Without any ceremony it goes flying behind them, somewhere in the room, and the resounding  _ splat  _ makes Remus  _ flinch _ .

Dee hoists him up from under his arms, holding him when Remus ragdolls completely and stars blur his vision entirely. Remus digs his chin into Dee’s shoulder (he’s taller again; taller and stronger and carries Remus without real problems). Remus should feel bad, probably, because he’s soaked to the bone and now Dee is too, but all he feels is  _ tired _ . A flicker of pain dances in his awareness, his arm whimpering from cuts Dee gave him at the rest stop. Its gone before he even recognizes what it is fully.

“Your internal temperature,” Dee breathes, placing Remus down, and  _ oh  _ this is familiar. A bathtub. Remus has been in a tons of those before taking keys, scissors,  _ his own nails to his own w _ \-- “is a fucking ice cube.”

Dee’s hands are trailing on his shoulders, on his collarbone, up his neck and cupping his cheeks. He’s so warm, and his touches paint Remus in invisible blisters, like Dee is turning his body into an arsonist’s memorial. He’s a pyre and Dee is the torch come to turn him to ash.

The water is a surprise. The rumbling of the hotel pipes sounds like thunder and Remus tries really,  _ really  _ hard not to let his stomach swoop with the dizziness the pounding in his head makes. Dee is talking to him, Remus thinks. But the words sound so much more prettier when he can’t understand them.

Dee has a really nice voice. Remus likes it, likes  _ him.  _ He likes the way it sounds talking french even when Dee is drunk off his ass, he likes the way it makes shapes and moves when he’s speaking, he likes the way the words always seem so genuine even when they aren’t, won’t,  _ can’t be _ .

Remus feels his head tip back and his eyes follow the way that Dee’s lips form that perfect circle and maybe that’s a bad thing, but he can feel all his limbs tingling from warmth for the first time in fifty billion Three AMs that didn’t happen. 

He is scared, but Dee is  _ still here.  _

He lets his eyes close and sleeps and trusts that Dee not is go ing to b e lik e ev er y ot her pe rson tha t Re mu s ha s e v e r m e t

  
  
  
  


H e c o me s to w ith hi s he ad fe eling heav y as s hit a nd his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Remus is warm, and its the type of warmth that he hadn't remembered he’d forgotten: the type that reaches all the way down to his toes, to the tips of his fingers, that winds its way around his limbs and cocoons him in an embrace that makes him want to stay there forever. He’s warm and safe and its  _ all he’s ever wanted _ . 

_ “--strikes again! It seems that wherever malcontent is stewing, the Prince shows up to stop it. This week alone he’s been all up and down the East Coast. Crime rates in nearly seven states have gone down 8% over this past month.”  _

Remus blinks his eyes open, with far more effort than he probably should need. He feels  _ tired,  _ in a way that's ingrained deep in his bones, carved into the marrow with a switchblade and decorated with flesh that's only there for show and not for use.

_ “I hear you, John. At the press conference held by the Department of Defense earlier today, Princeps--” _

_ “See, Is it Princeps or Prince? I’ve heard it both ways recently.” _

Remus is in a bed and he’s under the covers, tucked in with a care Remus doesn’t think he’s been given since that day he first saw Roman die and his mother didn’t know why he was crying yet. The ceiling looks like popcorn kernels, and he has a lucid memory of sharing a bag of popcorn with Dee and tasting the salt and butter and feeling his teeth break on the unexpected seeds.

_ “I think it was Princeps. Although Prince certainly has a much better ring to it. Brings back the chivalry, doesn’t it, Ladies? If he keeps this up I’m gonna start expecting more from the men around me-- that means you too, John! Coffee on Tuesdays isn’t going to be enough.” _

_“Oh good god Karen! You sound like my_ wife. _Pretty soon_ _us normal guys aren’t gonna be able to begin to compete with the World’s First Real Superhero.”_

“Oh  _ Fuck  _ that noise,” Dee says, followed by a thump of something hitting the ground across the room. 

It takes much more energy than Remus thinks it should but he manages to leverage himself just a bit: folds his arms to his sides and presses his elbows into the quicksand mattress and with a grunt he pushes his limp upper body into the air. For a wonderful split second, he stays upright, breathing fine and taking in the sight of Dee sitting casually at the foot of the bed, legs crossed and one of his dress shoes in his lap with a buffing brush in his hand.

Dee spins at the noise, dropping his brush and tossing his other shoe into the void around them. “Remus!” He’s around the bed in the next instant, gently catching Remus’s shoulders and laying him back on the mattress. “You’re awake-- I didn’t-- Are you-- wait no fuck…”

His touch is fire, even through the T-shirt Remus is in, which, he realizes in a cotton stuffed thought process, doesn’t smell like his own. There’s the distinct smell of fresh ink, of shoe polish and dried linen and of something that he hasn’t ever been able to put a name too other than “Dee”. He’s wearing Dee’s clothes, lying in Dee’s bed, wrapped up in Dee’s blankets and Dee is standing over him fretting like a mother hen.

Its almost funny considering that Remus can’t remember if his own mother had ever done that for him. 

Remus wonders what it would take to get Dee to lie down next to him and sleep too.

He blinks and when he opens his eyes again Dee is kneeling next to him and urging an open bottle of water to his lips. Remus takes it like a drowning man takes in air. Its cool, almost cold, even though logically Remus knows its just room temperature and it feels  _ so fucking good  _ going down his throat and taking away the bad taste in his mouth. 

Its like metal and Remus tried very super hard not to imagine the finger’s propping his neck up as shards of a windshield slicing through his medulla. His tongue pries off the roof of his mouth he nearly chokes on the small sip he gets.

Dee pulls the water away but he  _ stays  _ and Remus thinks that three inches has never been so far away before in his life. Dee’s breath is warm, a tickle against his cheek, a caress that for some stupid reason makes him want to cry.

Isn’t he out of tears yet?

“Hey,” Dee says, barely more than a whisper, as if he’s afraid talking too loud will shatter this reality. Remus kinda wishes he’d forgo all the talking and just go back to kissing him; his thoughts are fuzzy but Remus is certain there’s at least one place that Dee missed on his neck.

“He…” Remus swallows, “hey.”

“You alright?” Dee says possibly  _ softer  _ than before. It almost doesn’t suit him at all. Remus has known him for months now, known every inch of his personality, every scale on his face, every breath from his lungs. Remus has seen him live and laugh and love and lie and its all been loud and proud. He’s not  _ soft  _ and he’s not  _ kind  _ and Remus loves that about him.

Soft and kind people are forgettable; Dee is not.

“I’m…” Remus’s mouth is too full of words to actually say anything at all. His chest aches when he inhales, and “Kiss me again?”

There’s three inches between them, two, one, and Remus’s lips touch against his so softly he almost thinks it  _ is  _ a dream. Light as a feather, careful, and simple, like he’s asking a question and waiting for Remus to say “no”. For a greedy as he is-- and yes Remus knows Dee’s greedy, knows that when money is involved his appetite for it grows tenfold, knows that they could have all the luxuries in the world and Dee would still want something more, knows that “satisfied” is not a word in any dictionary Dee has-- for as greedy as Dee is, the way he kisses here, now, in this instant, is like he won’t fight if it gets taken from him.

(Which is as stupid as it is ridiculous. When was the last Remus had denied him something he wanted?)

“Like this?” Dee breathes into his mouth, “Kiss you like this?”

This is different, this is new, this is strange, Remus thinks. Because this is not like any future he’s ever seen. Not like bending over an IHOP table, not like knocking on Dee’s door in the middle of the night, not like winding his fingers around Dee’s suit lapels or his tie or his waist and dragging him closer. 

Its warmer, burning through him like he’s made of gasoline and even the smallest touch of their lips is enough to make Remus combust. Dee doesn’t bite, although Remus knows he can, and usually does, but takes all that Remus will give him.

“Ye-yes,” Remus pants, “please--”

Dee smiles at him, a wisp of his brown hair floating down over his misty eyes. He looks like an angel, ethereal and untouchable. Remus is so busy being in awe of the way he looks that he completely misses the flash of movement in his peripherals until the pillow is actively coming down on him.

“ _ Fucking!”  _ Dee snarls, slamming it down on his face again and again, “Dumbass! What the hell were you thinking?!” 

“Ow! Owowowow!” Remus yelps in between being  _ smothered.  _ Is it bad he kinda likes it? “ _ Sorry!” _

Dee slaps the pillow on his head one more time and then sits back on his haunches. He pants a couple times, because he’s a prissy rich white boy who’s never worked out before now, and then massages his temples.

“Goddamned idiot,” Dee huffs, “What the hell was that? You didn’t answer your door and so I shifted my way in and you just fucking... you were... I thought...”

Remus watched him breathe, watched him shudder and shake and stare down at the carpet like it held more answers than Remus’s face. 

“Dee--”

“I know what we said, okay?” Dee spits out, “I know that we made that agreement about no feelings or shit but I lied okay! I can’t do this without having emotions. I look at you and I just… I don’t want to ever see you hurt. I’ve been looking up medical references on how to handle the nosebleeds and I’ve been trying to get you to eat foods to thicken your blood just a bit because god knows you don’t eat enough broccoli as it is--”

“Dee.”

“--and I was trying to figure out how to say something because I’ve known something has been up for so long now and I should have said something sooner-”

“ _ Dee _ .” 

“--but then you were just about out of your mind all that day and you took the keys and drove us and I was afraid if I said something you were gonna leave me behind and I think if I lose you I’m not gonna… I’m not gonna…”

“ _ Dee _ !” Remus says and the shapeshifter finally looks up at him. His eyes are red rimmed, and his face pinched like he was trying still trying to hold back a word hurricane and it was tearing him up inside.

“I’m sorry,” Dee says, with a quivering lip. “I’m sorry, I’m sorrysorry _ sorr _ \--”

Remus wants to launch himself off the bed and steal the syllables from Dee’s mouth. He manages to flop over, and hang himself off the edge of the bed, dangerously close to falling right into Dee’s lap. 

“Why are you apologizing?”

Dee stares at him, like he’s from another world, like he’s not real, like he’s another piece of a future that isn’t going to happen and Remus wonders why this one feels more fake than any other future he’s ever lived through. 

“That’s super not like you,” Remus says, talking like there isn’t a lump the size of a boulder in his throat, talking and hoping his words aren’t gonna be the thing that scares Dee away finally, talking without _thinking,_ “But if you really want to make it up to me, you can get back up here and kiss me again. Maybe something saucier if you--”

Dee hits him with the pillow again, and he tumbles off the bed right into Dee’s lap, bruising where his head collides with a knee and his neck does something not-good.

And then… well then Remus is staring up at Dee and whatever else he could possibly say wanders off somewhere in his mind, leaving only a painful silence in their wake: a sizeable gap, a puzzle piece hole where something should be but there isn’t and it pretty much ruins the whole picture now, doesn’t it?

  
  


“Tell me something, Re,” Dee says and Remus thinks that he should have said something, anything, everything, anyway.

Whatever it would have taken to get away from this, to put it off, to push it away until they both forgot about it and things wouldn’t have to  _ change.  _ He doesn’t want things to change, doesn’t want Dee to look at him and expect something different because if he does Remus  _ will  _ and then he’ll slip up one day and Dee will realize how much better off he could be and then Remus will be  _ alone.  _

And he was alone for four years and he doesn’t want to do that again. Not now. Not ever.

He doesn’t think he  _ can.  _ The idea of driving without having to fight over the radio station, of having to talk to the hotel receptionists himself or sleep in his car again, of turning with one of his  _ hilarious  _ comments only to find an empty space next to him? It makes his stomach rebel to consider.

Out of all the people in the world he knows how lonely being alone can be.

“How long?” Dee says, “How long were you out there?”

For a moment Remus thinks about lying. Of saying just a few minutes, thirty tops,  _ don’t look at me like that.  _ Of pretending, of doing that make believe-- but then he remembers how much lying is like  _ acting  _ and how much he hates being a performer.

“Since… three am.” Remus says and the honesty burns his tongue, “And I couldn’t…I couldn’t move. I was stuck.”

Dee’s grip on him tightens, which is frankly startling because Remus hadn’t even realized Dee was holding him. There’s an audible swallow, a gulp, that’s nearly a whimper and Remus doesn’t know which of them make it.

“Th-three,” Dee echoes, lips shaking so much that Remus sees double and wonders if he could kiss that shake away. “W-what do you mean you were stuck?”

Remus blinks away the cold feeling of rain pouring over his body, of gravity dragging his core downwards, of his neck snapping to the side, of a receptionist screaming and car alarms turning his thoughts to mush.

“Like… like physically stuck, Remus?” Dee asks, “Like you fell and hurt yourself and couldn’t get up?” 

He sounds so  _ hopeful  _ about it that Remus wants to lie again.

He grinds his molars together and shakes his head instead. There’s blood in the back of his throat. Why does the truth always end with blood? On a snowglobe shattered on Roman’s head, on the gravel after it drips from Dee’s nose, in the back of Remus’s throat right here, right now.

“Stuck,” Remus says, “as in I couldn’t get out of the future.”

Dee breathes slow, hard, painfully. “Th-that can happen?”

Its not like Dee to be scared. It makes Remus feel less stupid for hiding it for so long. He doesn’t trust himself not to start unravelling at his seams if he opens his mouth again so he just wiggles his shoulders.

Dee exhales every atom in his lungs, Remus breathes them all in. The silence is awful, but its better than words.

“Has it...have I made…” Dee says, which is  _ bad.  _

“No,” Remus says, so  _ tired,  _ so  _ exhausted _ , “No, Dee. You didn’t make me do anything, okay? Don’t think that. I look because  _ I  _ want to. And when I get stuck its  _ my  _ fault--”

“What causes you to get stuck?”

Remus’s mouth closes with a click. His eyelids ache, heavy and itchy but his arms are way too cumbersome to even think about rubbing them. 

“I don’t…” Remus says and stops, because he  _ does  _ know. He spent all morning thinking about it, spent eleven billion trillion freefalls thinking about it, spent a thunderstorm and an unconsciousness thinking about it. What causes him to get stuck?

What makes the visions repeat, the future to become repetitive? What makes living feel like deja vu?

“Whats the smallest animal you’ve ever turned into?” Remus asks, “Like an ant? A worm, maybe a spider?”

Dee crinkles his nose at the mention of spiders. “An African Egg Eating snake. I used to ride in the pocket of….nevermind. Why are you asking?”

(Its the first time Dee has ever brought up the insinuation that someone else knows about his power. Remus doesn’t know what to think about that so he doesn’t.)

“When you were that small, did you ever…were you ever afraid? Of being crushed?”

“You get stuck in the future because you’re afraid of it?” There’s no judgement in his voice, just desperate curiosity and a need to understand why Remus is so fucking suicidal.

“That’s not an answer,” Remus points out, but it falls flat when Dee just stares at him. “No. Or yes. Maybe? Do you know how many possibilities there are in the universe? How many things are impacted from just one decision? The Butterfly Effect-- you know that right?”

Dee’s eyebrows furrow, “You mean from the concept of time travel? Where if you go back in time and kill a butterfly you can start a chain reaction of events that drastically alter the future and prevent yourself from ever being born?”

“Yes!” Remus says, “Exactly. Except think about if Every. Single. Object. Is a Butterfly. Your clothes are a butterfly, your shoes are a butterfly, what cereal you eat in the morning is a butterfly, the music you listen to, what bus you take, if you make eye contact with a stranger, if you smile-- They’re all fucking butterflies.”

Dee’s not following. Its cute how he tries to pretend like he is.

Remus swallows and tries again, “You wear a suit most days, right? Say we’re out in public and you wear a suit and so as we’re walking everyone moves out of the way for you, cause like… youve got money. One of the guys who moves out of the way isn’t watching where he’s moving and he bumps into a woman with a baby waiting at a crosswalk. She’s off balance so she falls into the road and oh no a bus is coming!  _ Splat!  _ No more woman or baby all because you wore a suit. And the bus driver gets fired and the media paints him as a devil so he can’t get rehired and really thats just the last straw since his wife died of lung disease last week so he gets a belt and bye bye. Guess what his son sees when he stops by for a visit the next day? Everyone loves free trauma--”

“Remus,” Dee says, “You need to breathe.”

Remus gasps in all the air in the entire world and its still not enough to calm him down. Its not enough and Remus doesn’t think it will ever be enough. He’s shaking right there in Dee’s arms and he’s begging for air that his lungs refuse to hold.

“There are so many,” Remus wheezes, “ _ So _ many, Dee. And people die all the  _ fucking  _ time in them.”

“Shhh,” Dee murmurs but Remus can’t get himself to stop.

“Everyone dies and I can’t-- I don’t-- If I don’t stop it isn’t it my fault? If I do stop it, is that what I’m supposed to do? I was standing there and I could see  _ everything  _ and I felt so  _ wrong  _ doing it. What if next time I’m not fast enough? What if something like the mall happens again?  _ What if I can’t save you in time and I’m left staring at your corpse knowing I could have _ ?”

Dee smells like shoe polish and dried ink. His heartbeat feels like a drum beat, pounding louder than Remus’s thoughts when the shapeshifter yanks him up and into a hug that Remus can’t possibly hope to return. He doesn’t realize he’s crying again until the side of his face is pressed into Dee’s chest and he’s breathing in the scents and hearing that heartbeat. 

Dee’s hands rub fiery circles on his back and he’s rocking them gently, like Remus is an unruly newborn who doesn’t know a thing about mortality yet. 

“Shh,” Dee whispers, “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

Remus feels like he’s falling again even though he’s safely in Dee’s arms. The ground is coming isn’t it? And if he opens his eyes it will be there and Remus will go  _ splat  _ and there will be no more do-overs. 

The possibilities are so big, so large, so  _ many.  _ And everything has an  _ impact _ . Cause and Effect and everyone ends up dead in the end. Roman and a silver sedan, Dee riddled with a bunch of bullet holes, Logan and a cracked head in an unlabeled open manhole-- it could happen at any moment, every moment,  _ this  _ moment. 

Remus’s visions are so large and he’s so small and every time he makes a choice it feels a bit like he’s setting this life up for a tragedy. It wouldn’t take much for the comic forces in the universe to crush him like an ant, or a worm or a spider or an African egg eating snake.

“We’re okay,” Dee says, wiping away a tear from Remus’s eyes. “We’re going to be okay, Remus.”

He talks like he’s the one with the ability to see the future. Or that he’s going to fight every god there is until they  _ are.  _ And there’s a part of Remus that believes him.

It sounds like a promise, like a challenge, like Dee is waiting for Remus to ask him how he knows and Remus doesn’t have the guts to actually do it. Always a coward. After all, when things get bad, Remus runs, doesn’t he? Away from home, out of the car, into his mind.

The room around them turns golden and orange and then purple and grey and Dee makes no movement to change where they are curled up on the floor of a hotel room. The carpet is hell but Dee keeps rocking them and hums until Remus’s tears dry up and he himself forgets how to push air out his nose.

Somehow throughout all of this the TV is still on, playing the news or a rerun of the news from earlier, but it feels muted from the world: something in the background, something not real, something that can’t ever touch them.

“Do you feel better now?” Dee asks softly.

Remus groans, “headache.”

Dee nods absently. He presses a kiss to Remus' forehead, “I have some ibuprofen.”

“Won’t work,” Remus presses his nose into Dee’s collarbone, “Medication doesn’t do shit for me. Never has.”

“Then we need to get something to eat,” Dee says subdued.

“Ice cream for dinner?” Remus suggests.

“You need a protein.”

“What if I put hot sauce on it? And chili peppers.”

“Those are not proteins, dear.” There’s a ghost of a smile on Dee’s face, which isn’t much, but considering how crappy both of them feel, Remus counts it as a win. He breathes in and listens to Dee’s steady heartbeat.

“Dear” and “Darling” make the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It sounds so eloquent coming from Dee, so natural and easy. One of Dee’s hands trail up Remus’s back and twist around the curls at the base of his hairline. Remus thinks he wouldn’t mind staying like this forever.

_ “--Secretary of Defense, Dragana Witchall, made this announcement this afternoon regarding the influx of beings with so called “super powers”--”  _

“Wait what,” Dee says, shifting them to the side to get a better look at the screen. Remus follows his gaze by proxy. On it is a recording of a lady who matches Janus in terms of dressing immaculately: a plum striped pantsuit and with a white shirt underneath and no jewelry. Her blonde hair is pinned back in the same professional bun that just about every no-nonsense teacher Remus ever had had. She looks about three seconds away from slapping every reporters’ hands with a ruler and giving them detention for questioning her.

Remus hasn’t ever seen her before. He thinks he would remember a face like that.

_ “Emergency legislation,”  _ She says, and Remus gets chills,  _ “Has been put in place to ensure the safety of all beings living in America.” _

“Oh no,” Janus says.

_ “Starting immediately, under the implications of the Next Evolution Act, all beings with discernible inhumane abilities will be required by law to register their abilities with the Federal Bureau of Evolution (FBE). While this is to protect all citizens from possible catastrophic danger, we have been assured that identities of those with such power will be handled with the utmost professionalism and confidentiality. Information about locations for registration will be shared in a few moments. We ask that people seek out these locations as soon as possible and will implement incarceration for an indeterminate amount of time for those who refuse to cooperate with the FBE. In the meantime, we encourage all citizens to remain calm and look to the future with hope. _

_ “Now, here with a few words, is Princeps, who has graciously agreed to partner with the American Government--” _

The rest is drowned out by the cheering of the reporters as the self acclaimed superhero steps into the screen, onto the stage, up to the podium and everyone surges forward.

Remus feels sick looking at it: the cheery smile of the man in white with a red plastered face mask and eyes that seem to stare into his soul, the way he takes control of the podium with ease and fluidity, the way that the camera bobbles trying to get closer. Princeps-- Prince-- whoever he is soaks in the chaos of the questions being thrown at him and revels in it.

Dee’s nails prick into Remus’s back.

“They can’t  _ do  _ that,” he says.

“I think they just did,” Remus says, maybe laughing, and wondering how much the government is paying the guy on stage to stand there. He doesn’t look  _ real.  _ He looks like someone’s fantasy, a pipe dream, a day dream created to placate the undercurrents of terror. Remus gets the urge to throw something at him, just to see if Princey boy here would dissipate into smoke like a dream too.

“No, Remus,” Dee says, fixing him with horrified gaze, “They- They cannot be allowed to do this. Forcing people to register with the government-- You know what that is right? They’ll sit you done in a windowless room and ask you how much you love your country. Enough to die for it? Enough to put your life on the line for it? And then they’ll turn you into a human weapon. And that’s just if you say yes automatically.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then they’ll tell you to fill out this form with your home address and let go you on your way and about two weeks later you’re going to be killed in a drunk driving accident.” Dee snarls between his fangs, “Or-- Or one of your family members will go mysteriously missing, okay? And they’ll show up on your doorstep and ask again. And even if that doesn’t happen, they’ll be some asshat who hacks the database or sneaks into the Headquarters and gets his hands on even a portion of the list and releases it and people will  _ die  _ from prejudices _. _ This is bad.”

Remus stiffens. 

Princeps is still on TV talking animatedly to the reporters who hang on his every word.  _ “As I was saying, with the help of the FBE, I managed to gain control of my abilities, which otherwise could have hurt those around me. In fact the FBE helped all of my team--” _

_ “Excuse me, Prince! ”  _ A reporter interrupts, “ _ Did you say Team?” _

The figure on screen laughs brightly; Remus thinks it the most irritating sound he’s ever heard even if he can’t pinpoint why exactly. 

_ “Yes, fair maiden! I do have a team! They are the most wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure to meet, Although I started my journey alone, I’m proud to call them my friends. We’re few in numbers now, but hopefully with time and patience, more brave souls will step forward to help us protect our homes and the lives of the people we love--”  _

Remus is pleased that both him and Dee fake gag at the same time.

_ “--That being said, each of us have agreed to partner up and help the FBE with their registration. I, myself, and my partner will be heading out to the West Coast right after this and we’ll be in the Portland area for most of the week for any of you fine folk who may want autographs.”  _ He flashes a brilliant, blinding smile at the camera.

“Portland,” Remus repeats. “Isn’t that where we are?”

Dee has a look on his face and Remus  _ knows  _ that look. Very well in fact. It’s haunted his favorite memories in the past several months: the moments before he’s picked a mark, moments before he nudges Remus in the side, the moments before they start planning on how to do something illegal.

Its based on trust: Remus will find them the future that works, Dee will listen without hesitation and they’ll get out  _ together _ .

Dee shifts and wiggles a bit, sticking a hand in his pocket and comes back with a coin, the purple Barney from the Baskillisk Casino where they met that had wandered off the floor in Remus’s pocket. He rolls it between his fingers.

“Are you...can you…?” He asks.

“Still see the future?” Remus finishes.

“Without it hurting you.” De says, “Because it's a definite no if you’re gonna end up in a pool of your own blood like that again. I’d rather not know things than not have you here next to me.”

Remus is quiet, which is unlike him. The TV switches to a commercial break about toothpaste or something and the screen illuminates Dee’s very kissable lips very nicely. 

“Tell you what,” Dee says, shakily, “Heads, we do something about it. Probably end up taking out an entire new branch of government and putting some superheroes in the hospital. And possibly become the most wanted men on the Earth. Tails, we ignore it until we can’t.” 

He swallows. Then he balances the coin on his thumb. In the dark of the room Remus can’t even tell which size is which.

\-- _ It flings up into the air with an impressive height, flipping eight times by its pinnacle and another eleven by the time it comes down on the floor and bounces into another arc, another flip, two, three. And Remus thinks that “supposed to be” can go fuck itself, because he doesn’t care what should and shouldn’t happen all of a sudden.-- _

It flings up into the air with an impressive height, flipping eight times by its pinnacle and another eleven by the time it comes down right into Remus’s palm.

“What do you know,” Remus says, innocently as it comes. “It landed on Heads."


	6. Video Killed the Radio Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee laughs pleasantly, although Remus thinks he should be swinging to dislodge the superheroes head from his neck.
> 
> “You are a riot!” Dee takes a few steps forward. “You think I’m up here to get your autograph?”
> 
> The Prince’s eyes narrow slightly. “Aren’t you?”  
> ***  
> Aka Dee gets on TV.

Remus is twenty-one and he thinks that people might not actually be worth saving at all. 

There’s an electricity in the air, a buzzing so loud that he can almost taste it as he shifts his weight between his feet. There are so many people around him, nearly too many, packed together like sardines in all the crevices that they can fit. Remus wants so badly to kick his leg out just to see if with one nudge he could toppled the human domino train down all the way, but Dee gives his hand a small, gentle squeeze.

His hand is warm, his touch intoxicating in a way that no drug could ever hope to be. Remus has felt it before, in futures that never happened, but it still feels unreal as it's going on. He thinks maybe, possibly that he’s  _ stuck  _ right now, right this second and that his real body is somewhere else bleeding out on the ground.

But he also thinks, traitorously, stupidly, suicidally, that he doesn’t mind as long as he gets to keep feeling Dee’s hand in his right now.

Dee’s touch is featherlight, but Remus is hyperaware of every atom in his body at these moments: Dee goes on to talk about so many things, but Remus’s brain only hears  _ touch, warmth, Dee, Dee, Dee.  _ And the Shapeshifter has to say his name at least four times before Remus realizes that time is passing and he’s not passing with it.

It should be annoying-- Remus thinks that Roman would have tried throttling him by now--but Dee just gives him a wispy, honeyed smile and does it  _ again,  _ like seeing Remus short circuit is somehow the best sight in the world.

Which is sweet, sugary, splendid. It might even mean that Dee intends to stick around after those feelings fade away to the bitter acquired taste that is Remus’s company after a year. So very few people ever got past that: the kids at school had flocked to Roman’s cotton candy exterior and had eaten him all up and then got burned when they mistakenly thought that Remus was anything like his twin outside his face.

(He wonders even now if Roman still shares that face with him. Did he dye his hair? Get piercings? Or did he cover his mirrors so he wouldn’t have to remember Remus existed at all? Does Roman think about Remus nearly as much as Remus thinks about Roman?)

Oh wait, Remus knows the answer to that last one.

Dee squeezes his hand again, even without looking. He insisted on dressing presentably today: shining shoes and one of his new suits tailored to his exact size and a flattering face that just screams  _ trust me with all your finances, I won’t rob you blind, Grannie! _ When they were getting their coffees, the woman in front of them had called him a  _ gentleman  _ and Remus almost choked on his drink at that. A pretty face, a kind gesture, a  _ mask  _ and Dee wore his like a skin walking alien and no one was any wiser about it. Except Remus.

He reaches over and steals Dee’s latte from his hand. Dee tenses, then relaxes and watches with an amused smile as Remus sniffs it.

“Not nearly enough vodka in this,” he decides and Dee laughs.

“Ah, yes, because the girl at the counter is surely old enough to be serving alcohol,” Dee says. “And the last thing I want to do is be on TV  _ drunk _ .”

His nose scrunches up at the detestable thought, but Remus thinks it’s the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Dee? On TV? With no inhibitions? Remus listened to his late-night rambles on the flaws of society when there was nothing but sleep deprivation weighing on their souls and Remus was moved enough to find himself here today. There was something about his honesty, his psychological approaches, his confidence, that made him so trustworthy. He was a leader at heart and Remus was happy to follow him, even if it meant going right off a cliff.

(Not like he hadn’t done that a time or fifty before. And besides, Dee could grow wings if he wanted. He’d catch both of them and fly them to safety.)

“A dash of vodka is just liquid courage,” Remus says. 

Dee turns his green eyes on him, the light through the window making sparkles in his irises, or maybe that’s just Dee doing subtle magic of his own. Whatever it was Remus decides he doesn’t ever want to look away again. Dee's eyes are priceless; Remus wouldn’t be surprised if Dee had stolen a hundred jadeite stones and shoved them in his eyes for safekeeping.

“Who needs liquid courage--” Dee says “--when I have you?”

Remus tips back Dee’s latte and slurps it so that his tongue burns right out of his mouth, because then at least there’s a reason for the mortifying smoldering all over his face. Dee reaches up and rubs the pad of his thumb over Remus’s cheek, tickling his mustache ever so slightly and laughs again.

“ _ Darling _ ,” he says. “You’re too easy.”

“You going to do something about it?” Remus challenges. “I wouldn’t be opposed to it right here, over this table, you know. Might wanna make sure little Timmy over there is covering his eyes first though. He doesn’t need his awakening until a few more years down the line.”

They’re close enough to the other customers that an elder woman with a pocket dog in her purse gives him a glare and a teenage girl in a sweater turns bright pink and stares out the window just a bit too hard. There’s a good chance that Remus could get both of them to do something more, but before he can open his mouth again, Dee is leaning in.

He’s using his usual height today, which means that Remus is just a bit taller, but Dee makes those three inches feel like hairbreadths. His breath is warm on Remus’s neck, and it sends shivers down his back when the phantom feeling brushes over his skin. He smells like cardamom, and Remus’s mouth freezes, his words long lost and forgotten in the prospect of Dee saying  _ literally anything at all. _

But in the end Dee just wordlessly hums and drops back to his flat foot.

It takes Remus a whole second to remember how to breathe. And another to realize that Dee took back his latte and was drinking it like he was entirely unaware of what he had just done to Remus, except that his lips slip off the rim on his cup and they’re curled upwards in that absolutely  _ sensual  _ smirk of his.

“It’s almost time,” the shapeshifter says moving on casually while Remus tries not to let his brain melt right out of his ears. “I should go get into place.” He peeks at Remus and glances away just as quickly. “You…you’re sure that you’re alright to do this, Remus? You don’t have to if it will hurt you.”

Remus wonders vainly if Dee was aware that the term “Martyr” was engraved on his ribcage, imprinted on his heart, seared into his soul. If there was ever a choice between himself and someone else getting hurt, Remus wouldn’t hesitate, and he never had. If Roman had ever  _ looked,  _ like truly looked, he might have noticed that, and then maybe things would have turned out even marginally different. But this time around, Remus nods at Dee and squeezes his hand back so hard that his fingers lose their blood flow. 

“It’s not gonna hurt me,” Remus says, which might be a lie and not even a believable one, but they both pretend. “Besides, this means something to you, doesn’t it?”

Dee’s shoulders tense, and resettle, as if he’s reminding himself that Remus is not a threat. He licks his lips, chasing after the taste of espresso. “It does,” he says and it shouldn’t feel like Dee is telling him some big surprise secret, because they spent the past three days planning this whole thing out on the floor of their hotel room while Remus rolled that casino coin between his fingers and thought about how Dee’s hair looks soft and fluffy when he’s just waking up.

“Remus…” Dee starts. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet. About me. And… this.”

Whatever this is. He’s hesitating again, hovering like he’s on top of a fence topped with barbed wire and he knows that he needs to pick a side but can’t quite decide which side will hurt less: the spikes or the lava? Remus shakes away the unneeded thoughts to focus in on the trepidation in Dee’s expression, but as soon as he zeroes in on it, Dee smooths it out.

“Timing,” he says almost as if to himself. Then, “I’ll tell you after we do this. I owe… I owe you that much.”

Remus doesn’t think there’s a single thing that Dee could ever owe him at all. Not when Dee pulled his bleeding body off the balcony, not when Dee kissed him with all the tenderness in the world, not when Dee stayed with him in the face of literally everything. Dee can’t possibly owe him anything when Remus is the one standing here with a power that’s not even helpful unless it’s killing Remus, and Dee is out here trying to save lives with what he has.

But Remus is decently sure that if he opens his mouth to say any of that, what will come out will be something undoubtedly more emotional than they have time for and will probably scare Dee away entirely: a love confession, a proposal, matching headstones for their graves that they’ll probably be in much sooner than either of them would like.

“And Remus?” Dee says, like he doesn’t notice that he’s literally the only thing that matters in Remus’s little world. He gives Remus’s hand another meaningful squeeze. Then he pops up on his toes to brush a kiss to his cheek in a way that makes Remus feel like a middle school girl in a catholic school discovering how attractive boys are for the first time. 

His heart beats so hard he thinks he can taste it around the coffee and whatever the hell it is that Dee tastes like. 

“Thank you,” Dee says with sincerity.

“If we were characters in a book, this is the part where right before the author kills you off for dramatic effect.” Remus reaches out and clinks his cup with Dee’s. “Don’t make it  _ that _ easy.”

Dee snorts in that very dignified way of his. “Of course, what was I thinking? My apologies. Here I was, assuming that the soothsayer might be able to help me to cheat Death but apparently I was mistaken.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right there in your ear, Despacito,” Remus says pointing towards the earpiece he’s wearing. “You won’t be able to get me out of your mind even if you wanted me to!”

Dee smiles, quick and wonderful and Remus drinks in the sight like it’s the newest liquid craze, better than the latte in Dee’s hands, or the ice coffee in his own, or fresh drinking water in the middle of the desert. Dee’s hand drip, drip,  _ drips  _ right out of Remus’s, although the atoms in his fingers don’t stop tingling with sensation.

“I look forward to it,” Dee says as final parting and then he weaves his way out of the café. Remus bites his plastic straw and follows with his eyes until he can’t anymore. The people around them move out of the way for him because Dee gives off that aura of someone important and no one wants to be caught dead getting dirt on his freshly polished oxfords. 

For all their planning, Remus still feels a little nervous with everything going on. They gathered as much information as they could about the day: the new registration office was being set up in a public library as a temporary location and it was closed for activity outside of the registration. Remus took particular pleasure in reading the heartwarming amount of public backlash about that from regular people who just really liked the library for some reason. The building is a lucky four stories tall-- which Remus thinks is nice. The library back in his hometown was two, poorly funded, and he’d been banned from visiting when he was ten because he’d seen the old librarian fall off a ladder and tried to help her by grabbing which did not go over remotely well.

The street is casual: a bunch of modern buildings with local shops and boutiques. Dee got sidetracked two days ago picking out new shoes from a window display and chatting with the owner who surprisingly was very informative.

“The Prince? My niece thinks he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread,” the older woman said while packing up a pair of single strap monks.

“Oh?” Dee said conversationally which made Remus look up from where he was flicking through a rack of sun dresses.

“I think he has a few screws loose,” the woman said. “No child his age should be running around in a costume like that. He’s just inviting danger to himself, not to mention those around him. In fact, Linda-- you know Linda right? She owns the chocolatiering place on fourth street? It’s got lovely chocolate strawberries-- Linda said over our weekly tea that if she got the chance, she would punch him in the face!" the woman chuckled. "But I don't blame her at all. All this nonsense about super powers and abilities and someone might start looking twice at how her baby girl can get any animal to eat out of her hand."

Dee raised an eyebrow. And the lady waved off his unasked question.

"Magic ability or pure coincidence! I don't care about any of that! If that FBE comes knocking on Linda's door the whole group of us shop owners are ready to stand up against them. Linda’s little girl belongs right here with her family and not anywhere near some secret government building or on some watchlist like a criminal!"

They left after that and paid a visit to the chocolate shop on fourth street. And what do you know, the little shop received a generous cash award from a lesser known chocolate secret society group thing. Remus doesn't remember the actual name Dee used, but he does remember that they were selling dinosaur shaped chocolates and he bought a box just so he could bite the heads off all of them.

The main street leading to the library-turned-registration office was closed off completely and marked that way with crowd control fences, which might have been for the best. In just the two days leading up to the grand opening, the city’s population seemed to have doubled. Remus was moderately amused by it, watching from the window of their hotel room: people came from the woodwork, springing into the city with the rigour of a bunch of busy ants who were so completely unaware of the exterminator coming.

Dee didn’t let him try looking to the future more than a few times and to be very ridiculously honest, Remus is kinda grateful for it. Every time he looks he feels something off about himself, something he can’t put a name to, something he can’t put a finger on. It just seems that one minute he’s fine and the next he’s hacking up blood. 

Which by the way, means he’s dying according to WebMD and Google. Remus doesn’t let Dee see the worst of it, but the nosebleeds are stronger, and Dee’s not exactly stupid. He can tell that Remus is using more tissues, that he’s holding them to his face longer, that he’s pale and tired and his hands are colder to the touch.

They don’t talk about it. Not really.

They should.

But if there’s one thing that Remus’s mother taught him, it’s that if you avoid talking about something for long enough it will disappear and you’ll forget about it.

Perhaps the biggest thorn in their sides-- both of their sides and their lungs and the back of their necks right through the medulas killing them instantly-- is the charming Prince himself! The character seems to be everywhere and nowhere all at once: the news has him stopping burglaries and home invasions up and down the east coast, calming down violent criminals, and helping little old ladies cross the street, and flashing his award-winning, crowd-hypnotising smile at the cameras. And yet for all the several hours worth of footage that Dee and him had scoured through, neither of them can quite figure out what The Prince’s power is.

It’s mental, at least. Something to do with information based on what Remus can come up with. He can tell from the way that the guy reacts in the middle of any confrontation: there’s a moment where green lights flash in his eyes, flickering so quickly it might have been a trick of the camera if Remus hadn’t caught it so many times on so many different occasions. One moment he’s acting one way, the next he’s changing course entirely, moving or stopping or avoiding. Like he knows what’s going to happen. 

Like he can see the future. 

But somehow he avoided all the fun nosebleeds and the feeling of death over his shoulder. Like maybe when his power manifested people actually believed him! Like maybe his friends didn’t shove him away and maybe his mother loved him and maybe he stayed home and watched Disney movies with his brother all night when they were seventeen instead of letting him go to a party where everything went wrong.

Remus’s hands shook far more than they had any right to when he first made the connection, first made the comment, first made the joke out loud for Dee to laugh at without pay attention to what he was actually saying. Then he dry heaved into a trash can for fifteen minutes while Dee rubbed his back and pointedly waited for an explanation that Remus didn’t give him because Roman is nothing and no one and he doesn’t matter when Remus has Dee.

“Perhaps he’s a mind reader,” Dee suggested.

Whatever he ends up being, Remus decides that The Prince better hope he figures out some shit with Dee. Because if Remus has to enter the ring, he doesn’t think the Prince will be leaving it in anything other than a body bag.

“You seem very… invested in him,” Dee said when Remus told him as much over a breakfast of french toast and eggs at a dinner where the waitress didn’t tell them to stop making out in any flickers of the future he blinked at. Dee was choosing his words carefully. Too carefully. 

“His face is very punchable,” Remus said, squeezing ketchup in his orange juice. “I’m surprised no one else sees it! Don’t you just get filled with rage when you look at him?”

The way Dee blinked said a lot, but Remus pretended not to notice as he used a straw to stir his drink and poured a bit of syrup in too. For flavor and fun. Dee doesn’t say anything more on the topic, and Remus doesn’t ask because he gets the feeling Dee will tell him the truth if he does.

And Remus doesn’t think that this is a truth that Dee wants to tell right now.

Maybe later. After Dee’s dragged the Propaganda Prince from his golden pedestal and Remus has had his fun in the mix. After they stop the FBE from their nefarious plans.  _ After _ . 

Remus tastes the word in his mouth and he’s not sure why it feels so foreign to him. It’s a strange mixture of bitter and unforgettable, of sweet and strange, of something he’s never tried before and might never get to taste again.

It’s better than blood. Less red too.

Remus taps his foot as he watches out the window of the coffee shop. There are a lot of people inside here and he’s not sure how many of them are regulars compared to how many of them want to just watch the possible freaks that have to walk down the street and enter the building pretending like they can’t feel all the world watching them do it. 

Remus isn’t even one of the suckers doing it, but he can understand how it might make someone queasy. The number of eyes looking, watching, remembering them is something of a curse; the cameras are blatantly obvious and the gawking of the other people is unignorable. If things were different, Remus wonders if he might have been nervous about this, about entering the building, about taking a step out of line and telling the whole world what he could do.

It was supposed to be a secret, right? At least that’s what his mother had always encouraged him to believe. She told him to stop talking, to stop crying, to shut up and pretend nothing was happening,  _ smile at the cashier, Remus, but don’t tell her that you can see her tripping over her shoe laces and cracking her head on the floor _ . When people asked his mother how her children were, she never had enough to say about Roman’s achievements.

Remus sticks his straw all the way in his mouth until it pokes his uvula and his eyes water. 

She tried.

And in the end it wasn’t enough, isn’t enough, because now she talked so much about Roman that she didn’t even remember that he existed anymore. He’s grown up and she’s still the same.

He wonders if she would even recognize him if they passed each other on the street.

Something to think about. Perhaps he can convince Dee to take a trip with him to the other side of the country, to his hometown, to his old neighborhood. He’s sure that by now they have enough cash for a couple dozen eggs that belong on the outside of his old two story suburban house. After all this, after they save the day, after they put Princey boy in his place.  _ After _ .

The clock on his phone ticks down, and Remus feels like his chest is going to explode if his heart gets any faster. The FBE registration office opens at ten a.m. and he’s not entirely certain the world will still be standing by ten oh five, but that’s what makes everything fun, isn’t it?

The coffee shop customers shuffle and move like a complex organism trying to rip itself apart but never quite managing it. Outside there are more people, pressed together, close enough to be touching, to be talking, to be nervous and excited and emotional. Camera flashes go off, news crews stand in the middle of the street with microphones interviewing the normal people who are treating this like a festival or a parade rather than the thinly veiled death threat it is.

They’re packed so closely together that Remus has a hard time seeing over their heads, and peeking at the temporary stage that’s been set up in front of the entrance to the library. There’s a podium on it, though, and decorations of a brilliant red, white, and blue, along with speakers and microphones being tested for the brilliant speech that the Prince is going to give for his adoring fans. There’s security and police patrolling everywhere, news crews and reporters and civilians watching with bated breath as the time draws near.

Part of Remus wants to wonder why here, why now, why did the Prince choose to come cross country out of the blue like this? Surely he could get just as much adoration from his fans in New York.

There must have been something that happened on the East Coast that drove him out here. Bad publicity that might make him look bad-- for a moment Remus entertains the idea that the Superhero managed to kill someone and now the FBE was graciously covering it up and sending him to Oregon so that he stays out of the way, stays out of trouble.

Too bad for him; Remus and Dee had claimed this part of the country as their own playground and they brought nothing but trouble with them. 

Dee would take extra special delight in taking a bat to the Prince’s glass house reputation if the man let him. Remus would take extra special delight in watching Dee do it.

Remus tapped the screen of his phone again, checking the time. Dee should be in place by now, hiding among the normal people, slipping between the patrolling law enforcers, and plotting the best place to be in order to make his grand entrance.

((It was adorable watching Dee figure out what he wanted it to be: the man curled up in a sweatshirt with hair still wet from his shower and chewing the end of a pencil in between spitballing ideas at Remus. His eyes seemed to glow when he got excited, and they were hypnotizing to look at, swirling with all the colors: grey blue, jade, hazel, silver. Whenever he liked an idea he scribbled it down on a piece of paper and smiled with his fangs out and Remus had to resist the urge to kiss him again, lest they fall behind in their planning phase due to an excessive make out session.))

In the end, planning this whole thing wasn’t all that much different from their other heists: the casino where they met, the fancy banks, the jewelry stores, a privately owned winery. There was less of Remus looking at the future, true, but that just meant that they spent more time lying next to each other scouring the internet on their individual phones for relevant information and eating chocolate dinosaurs.

The clock strikes thirty-till ten and the whole world seems to hold its breath. Remus can feel it, the way the air holds itself and suddenly the whole coffeeshop, the patrons, the cashiers and the machines go quiet with anticipation.

“There!” yells a kid from a window seat, covered in chocolate from a partially devoured muffin and bouncing on the cushion. He presses both his hands to the cleaned window, as if he can phase right through it if he pushes himself hard enough. “There! It’s a car!”

“Where? I wanna see!”

“Is it The Prince?”

“The Prince! Move I want to see!” 

Remus barely has time to brace himself before there are people pressing up against him, strangers shoving and pushing and yelling and trying to get to the window to see exactly what is going on. Remus himself leaves a nice face print to the glass that he suspects the long suffering employees are going to have blast cleaning later.

Assuming that the shop is still standing after all this. 

Someone’s elbow goes into Remus’s spine and for a second Remus blinks and there’s a guy standing over him, pressing a hand to his pulse, and the manager at the front desk of their hotel is screaming again. Remus hisses out a harsh breath that fogs up the window and scrubs the thought, the concept, the memory from his mind. Because he’s not dead, he’s not dying, he’s not on the hood of a car. And the last thing he needs is to forget that.

The car that the kid had pointed out was actually a caravan of cars: black nondescript SUVs with tinted windows and tires thick enough to be bulletproof. The type of cars celebrities and CEOs and politicians ride around in when their limos are being deep cleaned. The crowd blockers leave more than enough room for the cars to parade through the street right to the stage. Someone outside even sets off a confetti cannon so it rains red and gold and white paper through the air. 

Remus grinds his morals together and shoves himself backwards, knocking into about six more people who are swarming for his spot so quickly, so frantically, so vehemently, that Remus doesn’t actually make out any of their faces or forms or bodies. The whole shop was swarmed with people, but now all the bodies were pressed against the street windows and Remus thinks if they were on a boat, they would have capsized. He tugs the front of his leather jacket to straighten it and elbows his way through the front doors and out into the street.

Outside it’s not much easier to see anything. The cheering crowd is the most annoying thing ever. Although the hand made signs people are waving are a close second. Remus fights the urge to knock several of them out of people’s hands because the crowd control are watching like hawks and--

_ \-- “HEY! HEY!” one of the uniformed guys yells at him. Remus flips him the bird, and because he’s so busy laughing at the guy he misses the sign holder’s left fist coming for his face.-- _

_ \-- “HEY! HEY!” one of the uniformed guys yells at him. Remus flips him the bird, and because Remus knows better now he manages to dodge the incoming fist and drive his elbow up under his attacker’s guard and right into his diaphragm. There’s an exhilarating feeling flowing through him as the crowd around him jostles and shouts and falls to chaos in a way that completely derails the plan Dee worked so hard to put together.--  _

\--Remus tears himself back to the present, stumbling slightly over a swaying ground. He coughs into his fist as his body is checked by a passerby into the outside wall of the coffee shop. There are flecks of red, so small Remus wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t looking for them. That’s good, that’s great, that’s fine.

He’s fine.

The crowd pulses and the volume of dissonant cheering increases tenfold. Remus wipes his hand on his thigh and looks up to see over through the crowd for what was happening, although he already has a good idea. The cars must have completed their slow circuit and the doors of one of them must have popped open for the guest of honor to step out.

Another burst of confetti shoots out filling the air with white pieces of paper that almost look like snow. Remus ignores them mostly as he slips through the crowd in ways that his body  _ probably  _ shouldn’t be able to move: under an elbow here, passing a shoulder there, winking at the college student his face is three inches from as he scoots between him and an older woman with a crying child on her hip. He feels his spine crack more than he hears it as he moves.

He makes it to the crowd barriers with an impressive number of bruises, a bit of coffee from an off balanced teenager, and a scrap where someone hit him with one of those stupid signs. He’s close enough to the stage that his skin itches, that his throat burns, that his toes curl; the Prince isn’t even looking his way but Remus thinks that the white of his super suit would look excellent covered in his blood. There’s a rapier at his side that glistens in the sunlight, silver and shining and ready for use although Remus has yet to see him actually use it as a weapon rather than a fancy prop.

The Prince is an actor on a stage waving to his fans, a red herring meant to distract everyone from the implications of the FBE headquarters right behind him. He blows a kiss to the crowd and Remus gets the urge to punch his face again.

Instead he presses up against the barrier wall, hooking his arms around the metal bars to hold himself in place and watches with his tongue in his cheek. He nods at the techie standing on the other side: a guy with hefty headphones, bright purple hair, and a mouth mask with an anime character on it from a show Remus vaguely recognizes. The guy squints at him suspiciously for a moment but ultimately just shrugs and goes back to writing something in a pocket notebook and leaning against the side of a News Crew van he presumably works for.

On stage, The Prince approaches the podium waving still and smiling twice as broadly as before. Remus isn’t sure how anyone can look at him and think “safety” when his charming show of teeth also makes it look like his mouth was going to split his entire head open. A police line-up stands along the wings of the stage, like he’s a real prince about to address a nation. 

Someone Remus doesn’t recognize is also on the stage in a suit. The Prince grins and shakes the guys hand like they’re old friends. They pose for a camera flash for a moment, sharing a laugh that can’t possibly be that funny, and the new techie rolls his eyes so hard his head shakes. Another person from the crew joins him standing side-by-side and they share a short conversation that leaves the one with the headphones glaring.

The guy on stage claps The Prince on the back and offers him the podium with microphones before stepping back clapping enthusiastically.

Remus thinks boredly that it would have been funnier if Dee were up there, dressed up in a stranger’s skin and stepping back only so that The Prince never gets to see the knife Dee shoves in his neck. But Remus knows Dee better than that; he’d never kill, and he'd definitely never deliver a fatal blow when his victim didn’t know his name. 

(Remus wonders distantly, when he realized how much names meant to Dee. Was it before Dee offered up his name at that casino? Or later when Dee was breathing into Remus’s mouth and Remus was trying to figure out what was wrong with himself? Dee wanted people to know his name, wanted people to remember him when he left, wanted them to recognize him-- but he also didn’t and Remus isn’t sure how to solve that puzzle yet so he sticks it in the back of his mind to work on when its just the two of them alone in a hotel room in the dark.)

The Prince winks to someone in the crowd and finishes his last wave. Remus glances back at the line of SUVs but no one else comes out of them-- which isn’t that weird? Remus seems to recall the Prince being very specific that he had a  _ team  _ and a  _ partner  _ and yet he’s up there all alone receiving all the glory. 

Of course they could just be shy, but based on how little information there actually is about the team and partner existing, Remus thinks that maybe it’s a farce meant to placate children’s dreams of being on a super team with their super hero! 

(Remus is not alone in this thinking either. Dee’s favorite website called  _ AnxiTEA  _ has several dozen articles written about how The Prince sucks and that he’s just doing all this for publicity and recognition-- along with a carefully worded warning that if The Prince begins losing either of those things, he’s most likely going to become feral and turn on them all.)

Remus adjusts the earpiece in his ear just as The Prince opens his mouth to start off that particularly exciting, bold,  _ inspiring  _ speech of his. But before he gets more than a syllable out, a shadow floods from overhead.

The crowd collectively gasps and screams, spreading apart in every which direction; Remus lets out a hefty groan as the guy next to him bowls into his shoulder and he nearly flings over the fence. The techie on the other side drops his little notebook in shock, and his friend pulls out a phone immediately.

The shadow sweeps downward through the air like the largest bird in history. Remus laughs as he watches, Dee’s wings glisten with black wings that glisten yellow when the sun reflects off them. In fact just watching him, Remus has a hard time believing that Dee  _ didn’t  _ grow up with wings attached to his back. He makes floating and flying and landing look graceful, ethereal, easy and breathless and exhilarating. Dee lands on the stage due left of The Prince, safely with his knees bent to absorb the shock. When he stands back up, his blond hair flows slightly in the kickback wind and his trustable dark eyes sparkle.

(He went with the black and yellow color scheme. That had been Remus’s favorite option. The black of his suit makes the shimmers of gold look expensive, dangerous, and untouchable. Although, Remus is a little biased on the front that he always thinks Dee looks dangerous and untouchable. He’s a caution sign, a warning, and Remus can’t wait for The Prince to ignore it.)

“Hello,” Dee says and Remus thinks he can hear his barely concealed laughter over all the crowd's confused chaos. The police line behind The Prince lurch into movement at the sound of his voice, but the hero himself throws out an arm and stops them where they stand with hands on their tasers.

Dee raises an eyebrow, a polite expression on his face. And the Prince mirrors him.

“Oh wonderful!” the hero says in a confident tone, in a reassuring tone, in a placating tone that tells the audiences watching that there’s nothing to fear from the black winged Angel that just descended down on them like a herald of Death. Dee’s eyes shine with amusement that Remus can pick out even from over here. “Another friend like me!”

The Prince offers a hand to Dee, a handshake. Remus digs his teeth into his tongue as he watches Dee take it from above, like he’s royalty allowing the poor publicity prince to greet him. 

“Not quite like you, my dear Prince,” Dee says. “If the wings weren’t a dead give away already.”

The Prince’s lips tighten. Remus thinks that his expression screams “calculating”. He looks at Dee like he’s still trying to figure out if he’s a friend or foe, and Dee’s body language offers no hints at all.

Or well, maybe a few hints. Remus can see it, because he can see Dee: the tilt of his head is a challenge, the light in his eyes is condescending, the openness of his body facing the crowd speaks in volume of who he’s actually there for. Remus can read every bit of Dee and it sends a shiver down his back to realize.

The crowd bobs and murmurs, unsure of what to do with the surprise visitation. Several camera flashes go off like someone is trying to prove to themselves that the wings are real. The techie on the other side of the barrier reaches up and hooks a finger over his mouth mask as if he’s debating ripping it off to breathe easier. Remus digs his chin into the metal bars of the crowd barrier and wishes he had some popcorn.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Prince,” Dee says silky smooth.

“Good things I hope,” The Prince says back. “I would love to sit down and have a conversation with a fan as elegant as yourself, but I really must be getting back on schedule. I’d be happy to sign somethin--”

Dee laughs pleasantly, although Remus thinks he should be swinging to dislodge the superheroes head from his neck.

“You are a  _ riot _ !” Dee takes a few steps forward. “You think I’m up here to get your autograph?”

The Prince’s eyes narrow slightly. “Aren’t you?”

Dee flexes his wings just as slightly, letting them shimmer so beautifully for the crowd up front to see. “Oh no. I must confess I’m not much of a fan at all. I’d really much rather skip to the debate portion of this.”

“The debate,” The Prince repeats like he hasn’t ever heard the word before. Remus half expects him to snap at that guy behind him to offer up a dictionary so he can read the Webster definition before he responds. But in the end the Prince merely moves his arm back and settles his right hand on the hilt of his rapier. 

“I’ve been fascinated by you, Prince,” Dee continues, gliding around him and stretching his wings so that the police line is forced to take another step back or get bumped. Dee circles the hero much like a snake starting to coil around its prey before the final strike. He’s slow and methodical and Remus doesn’t think anyone can look away from him. He knows he can’t. “They call you a superhero. The first real life one to walk the streets.”

The Prince follows Dee’s motions with his head. “I have no control over what the media says.”

Dee gives him another condescending look. Remus thinks it’s eerily similar to the ones that his teachers used to give him when Remus insisted that the other kids shoved him on the playground when he did nothing to them first. 

“ _ Of course _ you don’t,” Dee says. “The media can be rather misleading at times. After all they said that my way of handling an out of control child with an arbitrary grasp on fire was fallible. Incorrect. Deplorable.” Dee stops just over the Prince’s left shoulder and tilts his head. “ _ Villainous.” _

The Prince blinks, stiffening.

“Oh,” he says. “You were the one at the mall. In Idaho.”

“Yes,” Dee says. “And if I had done nothing, that child would have continued to operate under the impression that killing is an acceptable punishment for petty thievery. And yet I’ve received nothing but bad press, criticisms, insults for what I did while you get praise and recognition from your…  _ adoring  _ fans. I would say that’s quite unfair don’t you think?”

The Prince’s nose twitches. Remus watches his hand on his rapier tighten, but he refrains from drawing and making the first blow in front of a billion witnesses. The cameras couldn’t draw away even if they  _ tried.  _

“Perhaps if you had tried talking first, rather than jumping straight to violence--”

Dee tuts and presses a hand to his chest. “I so do  _ love  _ how much you know about what happened there! With all the  _ completely  _ accurate information and that confident tone you’re wielding, my prince, one might be convinced that you had  _ been there and watched that child nearly kill three innocent people after I attempted the talking part first.”  _

The Prince’s jaw set.

“Oh? Nothing to say?” Dee lowers his chin to look The Prince dead in the eyes. “The truth is that the child in question decided to attack a man robbing a previously insured jewelry store-- most likely out of desperation-- and decided to attempt to burn him alive. The action of which nearly killed me and my… partner if it hadn’t been for a spot of good luck. Then when I attempted to help preserve the criminal from the life threatening third degree burns he was suffering, the child called me a villain and demanded I and another brave bystander back away from the man so that he could die.” 

Dee’s eyes flash blue and green and then a cold steel blue before they settle back on the silent superhero. “You and your  _ original  _ way of thinking are an inspiration to us all.”

The Prince’s face twitches again, the whole thing this time, twisting into a not-very-nice expression for just the briefest of seconds before he remembers that there’s a captive audience watching this play out. He takes a deep steadying breath and lets it out again.

“I apologize,” he says. “I jumped to a conclusion. You made an acceptable call in the face of a diffic--”

“I made the only call,” Dee inserts harshly. “And I don’t want your apology. Words mean nothing.”

“What are you here for then?” The Prince asks, and Remus can’t help the feral smile that etches across his features. He leans forward as far as he can without tipping the fence because he doesn’t want to miss a single second of this.

“Oh, that would be simple,” Dee says. “I want you to explain to the world, why you are trying to get hundreds of people killed.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I don’t suppose you would.” Dee says. “I can’t imagine that you’ve had to do a lot of critical thinking these past few weeks.”

The Prince scowls and opens his pretty little mouth, but Dee waves him off with a clandestine motion. There’s a delicious looking smirk on Dee’s lips: something that Remus thinks he can spend all day staring at. He’s having fun up there with all the attention on him, having fun with people hanging on his every word, having fun leading The Prince around like a dog on a leash. A showboat, a leader, an actor-- but Dee’s the director too, telling the cameras where to point and what to frame because this is his show, even if no one else realizes it yet.

“I’ve been following the FBE for a while now. You can imagine that as someone with an ability I tend to be interested in politics that directly affect me, as all good upstanding Americans should.” Dee flutters his wings a bit again. “However, I can’t imagine why anyone-- certainly not someone with the brains such as yourself-- would purposely align yourself to their less than noble intentions. They aim to take advantage of people like us, and you are using your… well earned celebrity status to convince the people that this is acceptable. Good, even! Surely you don’t truly believe that the FBE and Madam Secretary of Defense have your best interests at heart?”

The Prince shifts his weight around, looking for all intents and purposes like he was ready to leap across the stage and make Dee eat his own words, in the end he just settled back down. 

“I do actually,” The Prince says. “I’ve been working with them for a while-- all of my team has. Madam Witchall has been a great help in getting this project on its feet so that the FBE can provide aid to--”

"I guess what it boils down to is this," Dee says, steam-rolling everything else the Prince might have wanted to say. Remus can pick the irritation out of his clipped tone, simmering under the guise of being passion rather than anger. "How much do you trust your government? How much faith do you put in people, Princeps?

"This is, after all, the same congregation that sends military recruiters to the more impoverished schools in America and hounds kids until they believe that their only option to get into college is to sign up for the military. Is that what they did to you as well? Convinced you, you were dangerous and unable to control yourself and that they could help you?"

The Prince’s jaw tightens so hard that even Remus can see it from where he’s standing. He wants to laugh, but he puts his hand in his mouth instead. The crowd is murmuring, mesmerized by the sheer audacity of this shapeshifter to show up and question the morals of their beloved  _ hero.  _ It would be funny, if Remus doesn’t close his eyes and see Dee’s charred corpse from that kid at the mall not so long ago whenever he tries to sleep.

Hero idealization was a dangerous thing. It needs to be nipped in its bud before it strangles everyone; luckily there’s no one better with a pair of shears than Dee.

"I do believe that’s none of your business," The Prince says.

"But it is," Dee coos just a bit too sweetly. His words come out slick with honey. "Because you are also a person of ability and I happen to care a great deal about people with abilities."

"We have a duty to those less fortunate than--"

"We--" Dee cuts him off sharply “--do not have a duty to anyone for anything."

He takes a breath, recenters himself, and when his eyes open again, they’re a piercing green that pins the hero to place on the stage for everyone to see. "In case you’ve forgotten, my dear Prince, we are mere humans, too. Not everyone wants to grow up to punch each other in the face. Some of us would like to live a normal life, without being forced into superhero dramatics."

His easy dismissal is inviting danger to come knocking. Remus likes that about him, the fearlessness. Did it come from after he had met Remus, or was it something Dee had grown up with? A symbol of faith in Remus’s abilities or a symptom of delusion? The mystery is tantalizing on Remus’s--

\-- _ tongue. Remus savors the taste of it with a grin. It’s so much better than blood, so much better than slushies, so much better than french toast and eggs and only one step down from the taste of actually kissing Dee.  _

_ Remus blinks, pressing against the barrier, his eyes catching sight of something else amongst the crowd although he isn’t sure what it is at first. A flash of a camera? A pushing shoving motion? It's something and Remus tries to follow it but it’s gone in the next half blink and he’s not sure what it was at all.  _

_ Then everyone is screaming and the crowd is in chaos and Remus gets slammed into the barrier again and shoved along it for a sharp second before he hits the ground. The noise roars over his thoughts, over his breathing, over his ability to comprehend anything that’s not how he’s being stepped on by careless bystanders fleeing the streets. Someone trips over him, someone steps on his ankle, someone kicks the back of his head and his lungs burn and his eyes itch and he knows he missed something--- _

_ \--Tongue. Remus savors the taste with a hint of confusion. It’s better than blood that’s in his throat, than slushies in his memories, than french toast and eggs and only one step down from actually kissing Dee. _

_ Remus blinks, pressing against the barrier, his eyes catching sight of something else amongst the crowd although he isn’t sure what it is at first, and doesn’t bother caring, because something else is happening and he needs to know what it is that causes the crowd to splinter apart like shattered glass. Dee is talking on stage, winding up the toy Prince to dance to his tune, and Remus is watching with his heart in his throat and unable to hear a word of it. _

_ Then Remus blinks and Dee is not standing on stage because the shapeshifter’s body is morphing exactly the way it shouldn’t be. The crowd screams, and Dee’s eyes are empty in a way that Remus has seen a million times and abhors unlike anything else in the world. _

_ Dee is not standing on stage because he’s actually fallen off it onto the asphalt ground below and there’s a spray of red mist in the air where he had been standing before. Remus is body-checked into the crowd barrier, and skimmed along it, until he hits the ground and feels himself get trampled over, but it doesn’t matter because he knows what he saw.  _

_ Dee is not standing on stage because he’s dead with a bullet in his head from--- _

_ \---Tongue. Remus does not savor anything about the taste because whenever he closes his eyes the only thing he can see is Dee’s dead body and the only thing he can feel is copper clawing its way up his throat with the blind terror.  _

_ Remus leaps over the barrier, causing everyone around him to yell. The techie with the purple bangs in particular jumps back, but Remus ignores them in favor of watching, because Dee hasn’t seen him and doesn’t know what's coming and Remus wants to scream at the top of his lungs because watching Dee die never gets any easier to see. _

_ It’s a bullet to the head. From the right temple through his brain at a downwards angle and Remus feels the blood sprinkle over him like sea spray straight from his darkest nightmares. He barely even notices, barely recognizes it, barely cares about it at all, because the next thing he knows Dee’s body is following it down right into Remus’s arms and unseeing blue-grey eyes stare at an empty sky. _

_ The Prince is there too, mouth open and horrified, and even though everyone is screaming Remus can hear him start to say a phrase, a word, a syllable, “Re--”--- _

_ \--Tongue. Remus’s mouth tastes like blood and absolutely nothing else because Dee is going to die from a shot through the head from a sniper, a shooter, an  _ asshole _ and Remus thought maybe that Dee was over exaggerating before with his whole “the government is going to turn us all into weapons or eliminate us” rhetoric, but Remus thinks that he should have paid attention a little harder. Listened a little more. Believed a little better. _

_ He stares at the building behind them, the library that’s being passed off as the FBE and the dark tinted windows that make the upper floors look abandoned completely. It’s like watching….it’s like…. it’s … _

_ There’s a flash, a flicker. Then a heartbeat and then Dee is dying, dying, dead all alone and Remus feels himself body-checked back by a faceless person in the crowd and tossed to the ground to be trampled to death too.--- _

\--tongue. Remus spits blood out of his mouth curling in on himself to stop anyone else from seeing because  _ fuck him _ . He presses two fingers to his ear piece and pretends poorly that his throat doesn’t feel like someone took a pack of razor blades to it. 

“Sniper shot, fourth floor, third window over,” Remus  _ rasps.  _ His heart pounds in his throat, in his skull, behind his eyes in a way that makes him want to tear his skin off to get the feeling to stop. Blood floods over his fingers, smearing on his chin, and across his sleeves no matter how hard he tries to get rid of it.

“One minute, forty seconds,” Remus coughs, and stares at the drips that hit the lower half of his shin, the toe of his boots, the asphalt.

Dee doesn’t react. Not at all and Remus wants to scream because he can feel time passing and he can’t stop the future from happening. He can’t, he can’t he can’t he can’t--

"You heard me, right?" Remus says maybe a little hysterically, because  _ fuck _ , if they got this far and their mics weren’t even working and Remus just got the only person who ever mattered to him killed on live TV.

At this distance, Remus doesn’t know if he can make it, but even if he does, even if he tackles Dee down from the stage and the bullet misses them both it will go straight into the crowd, and there are people in this crowd-- people with lives, with families, with friends. They might have abilities, or they might not, but once that shot is fired the entire street will become a riot. Remus can hear the screams in his ears, ringing there so loudly it makes the present sound like a graveyard.

"I hear you," Dee says airily, acting like he’s talking to the superhero, but the words loosen the knot in Remus's chest, because he changed his speech, changed his stance, changed how much he knows about the future and now things will be different. The Prince eyes him rightfully warily, because Dee’s biggest weapons are knowledge and words.

"I hear you,” Dee says again directly to the hero, “I hear that you’ve been brainwashed into thinking that you owe something to the people who helped you control your ability, but the truth is… you could have done it without them, on your own. You certainly have the brains and the intuition for it." 

He offers a hand out to the hero, casually, fluidly, and Remus almost laughs. He thinks if he opens his mouth again then only thing that will come out is blood and the people next to him will definitely notice that.

"Come with me, Prince of the People," Dee says right as the sniper lines up the shot. "Let’s discuss a better way to protect innocen--"

The gunshot is silent. Remus almost misses it in the collective intake of breath from every living thing in a ninety mile radius. Dee’s hand is out and the bullet catches the sunlight in a brilliant single flash.

\-- _ through his brain at a downwards angle and Remus feels the blood sprinkle over him like sea spray straight from his darkest nightmares. He barely even notices, barely recognizes it, barely cares about it at all, because the next thing he knows Dee’s body is following it down right into Remus’s-- _

Dee’s skin ripples, his wings disappear. At this distance, Remus can’t tell what it turns into, what he impersonates, what he becomes that can fend off a bullet, but in the end  _ it doesn’t matter at all because The Prince leaps forward with his sword drawn. _

Remus blinks and the world feels like it tilts on its axis, spinning faster under his feet. He hugs the crowd barrier to steady himself. That… that isn’t possible. This isn’t what he saw. But there it is: The Prince wraps himself between Dee and the bullet, and draws his rapier so quickly that Remus almost misses it happening. It shouldn’t be possible-- It  _ can’t  _ be possible, but he’s faster than the bullet and somehow the piece of metal veers off trajectory into the stage at their feet and embeds itself there.

“That’s--” Remus’s breath catches, clumping up in a knot in the back of his throat that tastes a lot like blood.

The people in the crowd scream, the people near the front shove to move back, to get away, to find shelter and safety from bullets that were only targeting one man on stage. The police guard springs into actions that Remus can’t focus on because he’s so busy trying to remain upright when gravity is trying to drag him straight down to Hell.

“Are you alright?” The Prince asks, lowering his rapier.

“I--Dee--” Remus stutters.

“Was that... going to hit me…?” Dee asks in a tone that suggests that all the oxygen left the atmosphere. 

“I don’t-- I can’t--” Remus swallows a mouth full of blood and it goes down his throat like thick, slow slugs trying to suffocate him. “I swear--”

“Have no fear,” The Prince says. “I’ll protect you. As long as I’m here, no harm will come to you. You have my word.”

“Re,” Dee says. He sounds like he’s several distant planets away. Remus’s hands are red and sticky and he swears if he closes his eyes that he can feel the misty spray of grey matter over his face when Dee falls from the stage, when his body lands in Remus’s arms, when those empty eyes stare up at him and see none of the grief in Remus’s eyes.

“I watched you,” Remus chokes. 

He  _ saw  _ it. He  _ knows  _ he saw it and it was real and Dee died and Remus was left all alone like every nightmare he’s ever had. Dee died up on stage in front of the whole world and Remus saw his whole world shatter.

It  _ happened. _

_ “You can’t see the future, Remus!”  _ Roman yelled four years ago and Remus has proved him wrong a hundred billion times over since then. He shouldn’t have to keep reminding himself of that.

“You died,” Remus says. “You died and I watched and I’m sorry-- I’m sorry, sor--”

“That’s all I needed to know, darling,” Dee tells him. 

“Pardon?” The Prince asks, realizing maybe for the first time that Dee isn’t talking to him.

“You’re clever, Prince,” Dee says loudly, and Remus hears him so clearly in his earpiece it stabilizes him even when the world spins under his feet. Dee shoves himself out of the hero’s hold, stepping back twice, and looking downright murderous. “Far more clever than I gave you credit for! Did you just try to have me  _ shot? Killed?  _ All so you could look like the dashing hero on screen?”

“What?” the hero says and because he’s an actor Remus almost believes that he’s confused and not  _ threatened. _

“You just tried to kill me!” Dee snarls. “In front of all these people?! Because I dared ask a few questions about your motives?!”

The Prince stares at him, and Remus imagines his insufferable mouth is twitching into an awkward smile, like this is a joke that he doesn’t understand but doesn’t want to be rude. 

“I assure you that is not the case here,” he says. “In fact I believe it’s far more likely that  _ you  _ arranged to have yourself attacked on this stage to emphasize a point on your part. I suspect you might have some type of protection against bullets, but even if you did I could not stand idle when there is a chance of you being hurt.”

“How noble,” Dee says. “Throwing yourself in front of everyone and asking nothing in return no matter the situation. A true hero complex.”

The Prince’s grip on his rapier tightens, but he says nothing.

“You say such pretty words, Prince,” Dee says. “Tell such convincing lies. You want people to step up and join you in a game of play pretend without realizing there are deadly consequences when abilities get out of control. You want people to follow you, to sing your praises, to believe you can do no wrong…. You’re the hero, of course! They’ll be so enamored with you, they won’t notice you leading them straight off a cliff.”

For a second the world stops turning, time stops passing, the crowd stops moving. Remus feels every atom in the air pressing up against him, itching, pulling, compressing against his skin as his heart pounds in his chest like some type of creature trying to escape his ribcage. There’s a ringing in his ears made from the silence between Dee and The Prince and it’s louder than any scream that the crowd makes, any gunshot a sniper takes, any calm Dee fakes.

“And I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.” Dee offers a complimentary shrug and then he launches across the stage, aiming for The Prince’s throat.

**Author's Note:**

> Want more? Let me know! Or check out my [tumblr](https://greenninjagal-blog.tumblr.com/) to find out what fics I'm currently working on!


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